


Effervescent

by Lancelee (ashleeforreal)



Series: Witch AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ? - Freeform, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Klance BB 2017, M/M, Magic AU, Maybe - Freeform, Witch AU, a serving of klance from me will always have a heaping side of platonic kidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 10:51:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12725214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashleeforreal/pseuds/Lancelee
Summary: It could be a nightmare, or it could just be a normal dream that had not been everything he hoped it would. The hands would then hold Keith’s in a firm, warm, and steady grip, and lead him away from his own thoughts and into someone else’s world. This world was full of all kinds of things, from mermaids and fairies to fire-breathing dragons and sentient sea water trying to drown him. These dreams quickly became preferable to his own, and by age nine he had already figured out two things.One: as long as he held onto the hands, he would never be harmed, and there was no need to be scared. Two: the mysterious hands were the closest thing he had ever had to a family.





	Effervescent

**Author's Note:**

> 26k of suffering  
> comments and kudos keep me flowing blease water me im thirsty  
> find me on tumblr at [LanceLeeLing](https://lanceleeling.tumblr.com), drop by and leave a prompt for a drabble or maybe just to scream @ vld with me  
> art for this fic was done by the ever so lovely 13Bella on tumblr, and you can find the art for the fic [here](https://13bella.tumblr.com/post/167489532255/heres-art-that-i-was-making-for-the-klancebb2017) and please follow her!!! her art is so amazing and she is so incredibly nice and easy to work with, i could not have asked for a better partner on this project. I look forward to doing more bbs if I continue to be paired with artists like her <3  
> a big thank you to everyone who beta'd this fic the many times i messed up the plot/needed inspiration, especially Leo, Dee, Miki, and my child, Star. I love you guys <3

At first he only appeared in Keith’s nightmares. Instead of having no one to help him, a tan hand would lead him away from the jaws of sharks, or it would pull him back from those high ledges before he could fall, or it would cover his nose and somehow filter the air so he could breathe even as he sat among the flames and they engulfed everything around him.

 

Then it became two hands, always open and waiting for Keith to grab them when he no longer enjoyed the dream he was having. It could be a nightmare, or it could just be a normal dream that had not been everything he hoped it would. The hands would then hold Keith’s in a firm, warm, and steady grip, and lead him away from his own thoughts and into someone else’s world. This world was full of all kinds of things, from mermaids and fairies to fire-breathing dragons and sentient sea water trying to drown him. These dreams quickly became preferable to his own, and by age nine he had already figured out two things.

 

One: as long as he held onto the hands, he would never be harmed, and there was no need to be scared. Two: the mysterious hands were the closest thing he had ever had to a family.

 

As an orphan, Keith had been bounced from foster home to foster home, never staying for more than a year at most. For some reason nobody could keep him; they always became stressed at how badly he socialized with other children, and how his mind never stayed locked down in one place. In homes where there were other children, he got scared and nervous to talk to them, and wasn’t sure how to deal with them always getting upset when he wouldn’t play with them.

 

When Keith talked about his dreams to one of his guardians at age ten, they started sending him to therapy. He wasn’t sure why he was there, and the therapists always loved him and tried to tell whoever his current parents were that he just had an overactive imagination and was actually just very shy.

 

Years passed, families still looked at him out of the corner of their eyes with disdain until he left. The hands grew into arms, and sometimes Keith saw the shadows of feet leading him away from his own world and into the one he loved most.

 

There was one guardian that he thought might finally give him the home he had always been told was waiting for him by all of the social workers. Her name was Cindy, and she had curly brown hair and a warm smile. She worked at a hospital as a doctor, and sometimes stayed there too long, staying behind late to make sure every one of her patients received the care they deserved. Her reputation as the most caring doctor in the city was very well earned. Keith had liked her from the moment he saw her. She seemed much more understanding than the families that had come before her.

 

Cindy always made an effort to have a home cooked dinner with Keith at least three times a week. She asked about school and she told Keith about her day. One morning, after he had lived with Cindy for about a year and a half, she asked Keith what he was thinking about while he stared off into space. He told her about the hands, and she patted him on the head gently, combing back his hair and leaning in to give him a kiss on the forehead as the nanny knocked on the door.

 

“It sounds to me like you have a very good guardian angel, then,” she told him, pulling her peacoat over her shoulders and grabbing her keys off of the coffee table, about to head to work again. Keith tilted his head to the side, and reached out to grab her sleeve from his position on the couch. The nanny came in, and she automatically greeted both of them with a smile. Keith ignored her, his wide blue eyes trained on Cindy’s face.

 

“What’s a guardian angel?” he asked quietly. He barely talked to anyone but Cindy, so he wasn’t used to speaking loudly yet. Luckily, Cindy had never minded, and only kneeled next to the couch to reply just as softly. Keith liked that, and the security of knowing the nanny wouldn’t hear their conversation made him feel warm.

 

“Guardian angels are these people who look after us, and help us when we’re in trouble. Sometimes they’re people like you and I, and sometimes we can’t see them, but they’re there anyway.” Cindy responded, her hand on Keith’s knee. “Maybe you can only see yours in your dreams. They seem nice, though, if they save you from nightmares.”

 

Keith nodded, letting go of Cindy’s sleeve so she could stand and go to work. “I think they’re very nice,” he spoke, watching as she raised and headed to the door. She smiled gently back, waving a hand and sending him a wink before turning the corner into the foyer. The nanny asked Keith if he wanted a snack, and he shook his head as the door closed behind Cindy.

 

Her guardian angel was not nearly as good at its job as Keith’s was. A few months later, Cindy never came home from work. He stayed with his nanny for a while, who told him Cindy was in an accident. Keith heard the murmuring over the phone late at night about a drunk driver and a red light, and a few days later, an exhausted social worker loaded his belongings into the trunk of a beat up sedan, then drove him to the next family.

 

~*~

 

At twelve, the hands finally became a torso, with a head and everything. It turns out Keith’s guardian angel was a man, and he was nowhere near an angel. Keith still hadn’t heard his voice yet, and Keith wasn’t sure if he wanted to.

 

The man had a mischievous smile, and even though his hands still made Keith feel safe, the man’s smile tempted him in strange ways and made Keith feel like he was sitting on the edge of a cliff, and one push would send him careening off the edge. The man always had some sort of smile on his face, and while on occasion it was fond, sometimes he looked like a lion licking its lips while staring down its prey.

 

Keith never had nightmares, as he didn’t even bother looking at the beginnings of his own dreams anymore. Middle school brought with it the influx of kids deciding anything different was bad, and Keith had had to deal with his fair share of bullying already. Keith was still quiet and socially inept, hopeless when it came to interacting with others and bad at understanding social cues like apologies and thank yous. He barely said hello to anyone but the teacher, who always said it first in some forced attempt at making Keith talk to his classmates. Kids his own age found him mean and weird, usually avoiding him when they could, except for the few nicer kids who tried to be his friend relentlessly.

 

Sleep was his only reprieve, and he did it often, dozing off in class or napping for hours before dinner in whatever home he was tossed into. As soon as the haze of sleep was over him, he was blindly reaching out for hands that clasped back at his own more often than not, dragging him into the man’s world and far away from Keith’s miserable existence.

 

It didn’t help when, on Keith’s fourteenth birthday, he realized how handsome this man was. At this point he should have been chasing girls around like the rest of the boys in his class, but instead he slept through whatever classes he could afford to and turned down the rare invitations to spend time with classmates in order to see the man in his dreams.

 

The man had the same dark mahogany skin as his hands all over his body, every inch as warm to the touch as the tips of his fingers Keith had become so accustomed to. It always contrasted nicely with Keith’s pale skin, and the colors somehow seemed to complement each other. The man’s curly brown hair was short and darker than his skin, the color of dark chocolate. (Keith noted that it was a few shades darker than Cindy’s.) The man’s smile was almost always there when he looked at Keith, the canines too sharp to be human and the smile so blindingly white it seemed unnatural. Though, his teeth were far from the most unnatural thing about him.

 

The man’s eyes had no trace of white in them. Instead, the area surrounding his irises was a reflective black, the same as his pupils. The iris itself was an enchanting shade of blue, never seeming to sit still. It was the color of the ocean, and Keith sometimes thought he could see waves crashing when the light reflected off of them just right, the flashes of white against the deep blue looking like the sea foam at the edge of the shore.

 

This was how Keith started to drown.

 

~*~

 

Against all odds, at age sixteen, Keith got a girlfriend. He wasn’t particularly attracted to her, in fact he’d never even noticed her until she asked him to Winter Formal. However, he had never been asked to a dance before, and people were watching and making him nervous, so he stuttered out a yes and that was that.

 

The dance itself was a mess. They went out to dinner beforehand, and he paid for both meals like his foster father had told him to. The girl somehow managed to keep up a one-sided conversation, never faltering at Keith’s short, quiet, or nonexistent responses. Keith only had the confidence to dance to slow songs that didn’t involve much movement, and the girl introduced him to all her friends. He had a hard time keeping up with their names, and eventually just gave up on learning them. On the bright side, people in his class seemed to realize he wasn’t actually mean or rude - he just genuinely had no idea how to socialize.

 

After the dance, she’d just kept coming up to him. She talked to him between classes, sat next to him at lunch, and sometimes waited at his locker in the morning to hold his hand and ask if he’d missed her. To this, Keith never gave a direct response, but one time she mentioned how she could tell he cared even if he didn’t say it outright, and it never became an issue.

 

Keith didn’t actually know her name until a month after they’d been “dating” (if you could call it that). Her name was Samantha, and she was beautiful (according to some guys he’d overheard in class), and kind. She asked him to go places with her, like walking in the park or to go get ice cream. Keith didn’t know anything but the fact that he was supposed to pay for the food. At least he was living with a well off family at the time.

 

Samantha had green eyes and blonde hair, and her smile was small and shy, leaving lines in the lingering baby fat of her chubby cheeks. She was also shorter than Keith, so when she suddenly stood on her tiptoes one day and kissed him tentatively on the lips, he was surprised and spluttered for a moment before looking away with color on his cheeks. It was his first kiss after all, and he was too embarrassed to tell her he hadn’t enjoyed it. Samantha was nice, but he didn’t want to _kiss her_. It was strange, and when he thought about kissing, he could think of other people he’d rather kiss. In fact, only one image flashed through his mind at that thought.

 

_A dangerous grin splitting through dark cheeks, teeth too white and canines too sharp._

 

Samantha took his reaction as shyness, and smiled brightly with teeth that didn’t blind and canines nowhere near sharp enough to tear flesh.

 

Keith let her kiss him sometimes, but only when people were around and he felt like he had to. Samantha wasn’t sure how to react when he turned away in private, and seemed to think it had something to do with his troubled past. She tried talking to him about it, asking if something had happened to make him act this way.

 

Keith stayed quiet, playing with his fingers. He had stopped telling people about the man in his dreams after Cindy. Samantha stopped asking.

 

About a week after that, she burst into tears when Keith turned his head again. He didn’t know how to react, and he briefly raised his hands to try and help, but then dropped them again. She cried, and he tried asking what was wrong, but she didn’t respond. Keith stood up from her couch, and left. As soon as he got to his current home, he dropped onto his bed and took a nap.

 

That was the first time he and the man talked.

 

“You’re hurting her, you know. You should end it,” the man muttered, pulling him down a flight of stairs. Keith’s feet followed easily. He trusted the man. Now that he could talk, Keith could find out what to call him.

 

“What’s your name?” Keith asked, tugging at the man’s hand to make him pause. They’d been walking down the stairs for a while, and for some reason he felt like once they reached the bottom there wouldn’t be any talking. Keith’s voice came out louder than it usually did, more confrontational than it ever had when he was awake. Maybe it was because this was only a dream. It wasn’t real. The man stopped, one leg stretched down to the stair below him and the other bending to stand on the same step as Keith.

 

“Guess, pretty boy,” the man teased, taking the hand he wasn’t holding and running his thumb over the back of Keith’s knuckles. A sharp breath of air shot into Keith’s lungs at the brush of fingers. The man seemed to light a trail of fire over the bones in his wake. His eyes shone with mirth as he brought his face closer to Keith’s to gauge his reaction.

 

Keith glanced around the stairwell they occupied, not finding anything of interest to give him hints. The walls were plain, the stairs were made of rickety wood, the bottom was too far away to see. Even with how boring their surroundings were, Keith was still excited just because the man was here.

 

“I’m bad at guessing,” he admitted lamely. The man smirked, pulling away from Keith’s face and walking backwards down the stairs which, okay, _that’s creepy_ , but Keith had seen the dark skinned man do stranger things in the past.

 

“I’m aware of your terrible guessing skills, Keith. Just humor me.”

 

The man’s tone was teasing. Keith took on the challenge, irritated at the man insinuating he couldn’t do it, or that his attempts would be just to laugh at him. (Keith also knew there was a very miniscule chance he’d get it right, but it was the principle that mattered.)

 

“Um, Blake?” Keith tried, following the man down the stairs. The man scoffed, pressing his thumbs into the back of Keith’s hands in offense.

 

“Do I look like a Blake to you?” he huffed, eyes narrowing at Keith.

 

“Maybe?”

 

“Unbelievable.”

 

~*~

 

“Are you going to cut your hair?” Samantha asked, swinging her legs. They were on a bench in the park, and her legs didn’t quite touch the ground. Keith shrugged. He could have told her that he had planned to go get it cut that weekend, but decided to wait for her response.

 

“Don’t,” she requested, “I like your hair longer. It looks good on you.”

 

Keith thought back to the way she had cried a few days ago, the hot feeling of guilt twisting at his stomach. Maybe doing this would make him a better boyfriend?

 

“Sure,” he replied, staring off into the distance. He wanted to go home. He wanted to sleep.

 

~*~

 

“What the fuck? Keith, get a haircut. The mullet doesn’t look good on anyone,” the man complained, flicking the end of Keith’s grown out hair.

 

“Sorry, Jason, my girlfriend likes it long. Also, not a mullet,” Keith snapped, “my hair just grows like this. It’ll all even out eventually.”

 

The man let out an exasperated sigh, first shaking his head at the poor guess at his name and then glaring at the hair cut - or lack thereof - that had offended him so much. “Keith, no offense, but seriously. You don’t even want  to be dating her in the first place, why do what she wants?”

 

“Maybe because I feel guilty, Richard.”

 

The man scowled at the name. “Are you trying to insult me with these names now?”

 

“Who knows, Petunia?” Keith provoked. The man was really frowning now. He was silent, and turned to look off the side of the small boat they sat in. The small waves of the lake rocked them gently, and near the edge of the crystal blue water Keith could see a rose garden made into a maze. He wondered, idly, if they’d wander through it together. He wasn’t even concerned about making it out of the maze, only that the man would be with him while he went through it.

 

“It’s Lance,” the man grumbled.

 

“What is?” Keith asked, hands reaching to grab the oars and row them back to shore. He wanted to see what the man looked like with roses in his hair.

 

“My name,” the man replied, “it’s Lance.”

 

Keith froze, and looked up at the other occupant of the boat. His eyebrows were furrowed, eyes cast down to the water. The black sclera flashed with the reflection of light bouncing back into Lance’s face off the water. Keith weighed his options before beginning to row towards the maze. Lance didn’t look up.

 

Once at shore, Keith got out of the boat and held out a hand to Lance, then led the other around for once as he walked straight into the walls of roses without looking back. “Lance,” Keith muttered, testing it out on his tongue. The man behind him tightened his grip around Keith’s hand.

 

“Keith,” he said in reply.

 

There was silence for a few minutes as they walked aimlessly through the maze, before Lance sped up and took the lead like he usually did, pulling Keith down more narrow passageways and through paths he wouldn’t have chosen, until they finally broke through the walls of leaves and blooms to a small clearing with a gazebo in the middle.

 

“Let’s just sit and talk for a while,” Lance offered, towing Keith inside of the structure and gesturing to a bench covered by a soft-looking cushion.

 

“This is so cheesy,” Keith intoned, but sat down anyway. Lance sat next to him, as close as they’d always been. Considering their entire relationship had began from Lance touching him, lots of physical contact was common, and always made Keith feel warm and safe. Lance slung an arm over the back of the bench, pulling Keith right up against his side.

 

“How long do you want to stay here?” Lance asked innocently. He looked down at Keith, the look in his eyes letting Keith know it wasn’t a loaded question, just a curious one.

 

“As long as I can,” Keith replied immediately, bringing his legs up onto the bench beside him and leaning all his weight on Lance. “Now that you talk to me, I don’t really have a reason to want to leave.”

 

“What about your girlfriend?” Lance queried, brushing his hands through Keith’s hair. He gathered it all up into one handful, then removed one of the beaded bracelets from his wrist to tie it back. He always wore lots of bracelets, and when Keith asked about them, Lance told him it was just because he thought they were pretty.

 

“She’ll leave me eventually. Plus, I never really agreed to date her. I just didn’t know what else to do when she asked me to that dance, and then a bunch of people told me we were good together and that I was lucky. Then people stopped looking at me weird for falling asleep in class and stuff, so I figured I’d just let it go until I moved again,” Keith hummed, enjoying the feeling of Lance playing with his hair.

 

Lance gave a little click of his tongue, twisting the bracelet one more time to firmly hold Keith’s hair in place. “That’s a little unfair to her, don’t you think? She’s very sweet, I can’t imagine any regular teenage boy not liking her.”

 

Keith’s brows furrowed. “Should I like her? I don’t like it when we kiss, at all. Is it supposed to feel good?”

 

Lance paused, then maneuvered Keith so he was laying in his lap. “You don’t have to like her. Are there people you’d rather kiss?” Lance questioned, sliding his fingers through Keith’s bangs to brush them off of his forehead.

 

“You, probably.” Keith admitted. He’d never lied to Lance in the short time they’d been talking, why would he now? That didn’t mean it wasn’t embarrassing, however - he could feel his face turning the color of a tomato.

 

Lance’s hand stopped moving, and his eyes widened as he looked down at Keith. They held their gaze for a few moments, and slowly, Lance’s eyes were less surprised and became softer as they looked down on the younger boy.

 

“Oh, Keith,” Lance murmured, his voice overflowing with affection, “do you really want that?”

 

Keith turned even more red, if possible. His cheeks were burning and he had to look away. “Yes,” he whispered. He trusted Lance, but this was the most vulnerable he’d ever felt in front of him.

 

Lance resumed playing with Keith’s bangs, a soft sigh leaving his lips as he leaned over and brushed his lips over Keith’s cheeks. He paused there, his mouth roaming over the boy’s cheekbones and towards Keith’s ear, letting his breath fan over the overheated flesh with a shuddering huff of air.

 

“You’re going to be the death of me, pretty boy,” Lance breathed into his ear. Keith spluttered and let Lance press his lips more firmly into his cheek. It was so much more satisfying than anything Keith’s girlfriend had ever done, the press of Lance’s nose into his cheekbone spreading a warmth in his belly that he couldn’t ignore. He didn’t have time to think about that as he looked back at Lance’s face.

 

Keith wasn’t expecting the stare he received. Lance’s eyes were sharp, and there was no other way to describe the way Lance looked at him other than _starving_.

 

Then Lance sealed their lips together, and Keith could taste it. Everything about how Lance devoured his lips screamed _hungry_. It should have been alarming. It should have caused him to waver.

 

Instead, Keith took in a deep breath through his nose, felt his own desperation for the other man crawl up his throat, and kissed back with just as much fervor, if not more. Lance groaned, coaxing Keith’s mouth open and pushing his tongue in. Keith loved the feeling, and let out a pleased mumble between kisses. Something about Lance leaving the taste of cinnamon and honey in his mouth felt more right than he could describe. This was nothing like kissing Samantha. This was where Keith was meant to be.

 

~*~

 

Keith woke up suddenly, yanked out of his dream by a harsh knocking on his door by his  foster father, Roger. Dinner, apparently, had been ready for a while and Roger had been trying to wake him up for ten minutes.

 

Keith had a scowl on his face as he opened the door, but that wasn’t unusual. Everyone knew Keith hated everyone the few minutes after he was woken up. Roger repeated his statement about dinner, before he scanned his eyes over Keith pensively and then smiled slightly.

 

“I see you tried doing something with your hair for once,” Roger commented, “it looks nice. You should wear it like that more often.”

 

Keith didn’t register the words yet, but nodded anyway before following Roger towards the dining room. At the bottom of the stairs, the compliment finally sunk in, and he reached back to touch the hair pulled together at the base of his neck. His fingers trembled as they ran over the string of beads holding it there.

 

_Didn’t that happen in a dream?_

 

~*~

 

Each bead on the bracelet had a different scene from Keith’s dreams painted on it. The one he liked most was the one with the gazebo sitting on the red background. It was the same color as the roses. Another bead held a dragon wing stretched out over a grey sky - a dream he’d had with Lance when the other was nothing more than two arms. There was even one of a small rusty bridge in the middle of the woods, a place he dreamed of often. Lance liked to frequent that location.

 

The bracelet had not left Keith’s body since it was discovered, always either on his wrist or in his hair. He didn’t ask Lance about it, and whenever Samantha asked, he said someone important had given it to him. She had been upset about the secrecy, but Keith was honestly just trying to find a way to break up with her. After kissing Lance, and knowing there was more than just _dreaming_ going on here, he could no longer fully convince himself it was worth the discomfort it caused him to date her.

 

“How do you break up with someone?” Keith asked, letting his gaze roam over the bustling city streets below them. Lance coughed, then hooked his foot with Keith’s under the tiny table between them. This was also a location Lance brought him to often. It was a messy apartment in New York, with a balcony overlooking a busy road that was constantly moving and making noise. Lance seemed most comfortable here of all the places they visited. Dreams here were always extremely vivid - nothing seemed dreamlike at all, it was almost as if Keith was really there.

 

“Did the guilt finally catch up to you?” Lance joked, nudging their knees together. Keith looked up and tapped his finger against the wooden tabletop, before sliding his hand over the surface and grazing their fingers together.

 

“It’s too much trouble to date her now that I know you’re not just a dream,” he concurred. “It’s also not fair to her when I know I’m never going to have feelings for her.”

 

If Lance was surprised that Keith had figured out he wasn’t just some hallucination in his dreams, he didn’t show it. Lance just looked down at the people scuttling place to place forlornly, before glancing up to catch Keith’s gaze.

 

“When you turn eighteen, I’m coming to get you. In real life.”

 

Keith’s breath caught in his throat. “Really?” he asked, not even trying to hide the hope and excitement in his voice. Lance was the only constant in his life, the only one whom he never had to worry about his bad social skills around. Being together when he was awake - that was all Keith had ever hoped for.

 

“I’ll explain everything closer to your eighteenth birthday, I promise. You turn seventeen in, what? A month?” Lance wondered, flicking his fingers back and forth as if counting the exact days.

 

Keith nodded, hooking his other foot around the leg Lance had on his side of the table and trapping it there. He had so many questions, but it didn’t seem like the time to ask them. It occurred to Keith that it really didn’t matter what happened. If Lance was there, he’d be happy. So, for now, he’d act like he normally did.

 

“Pretty lame that you made me a friendship bracelet. Didn’t realize you were twelve.” Keith teased. Lance tried to hide his smile and used his free leg to kick Keith’s shin.

 

~*~

 

Keith still hadn’t figured out how to break up with Samantha, but luck was on his side. Even though he wasn’t moving to another family, Roger did get a job promotion, so his current family was moving. Of course, it was only halfway across the state, but Keith saw this as his golden ticket.

 

“I just don’t think that with everything going on, it’s not a good idea. You deserve someone who can be there for you all the time,” Keith stated. He was feeding her exactly what Lance had told him to say, verbatim. “You’re an amazing girl, but you deserve better. I don’t think I can do long distance.”

 

It came out sounding awkward and forced, and Keith was internally cringing the entire time. It sounded like a desperate excuse to him, but Samantha was nodding in understanding and taking everything in stride. Of course, Keith could tell she wanted to cry. She was already sniffling, and she was blinking too much. _Don’t cry don’t cry for the love of everything please don’t cry._

 

Keith almost became religious when she took a deep breath and steadied herself, hands bracing on the park bench they were sitting on. “Thank you, Keith. You’re being really mature about this. I don’t think I can do long distance either, but if you hadn’t said anything I would have tried, and I don’t think it would have worked out well.” Samantha observed, kicking her feet where they hovered over the ground, just like always. She really was tiny.

 

They were quiet for a while, and Keith kind of hated himself when he blurted out, “I really need to go home and pack.” It was true, yes, but it was like a flashing neon sign saying _I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE_.

 

“I understand. I guess this is goodbye,” she lamented. After a few seconds, she leaned over and kissed Keith on the cheek. Keith froze. He stopped himself from jerking away, and mentally high-fived himself when he hid his expression before she saw it. He wondered, briefly, if Lance could see this.

 

Samantha stood, gave him a wobbly smile, and then turned back the way she came and headed home. Keith let out a sigh of relief, stretching his legs out and craning his neck back. At least that was finally over.

 

~*~

 

“How’s the new school?” Lance asked, grabbing a pen from the desk in front of them. More and more often lately, their excursions in the dreams were getting less adventurous and strange and becoming more casual, like places in Keith’s everyday life. There were other mundane places too, which Keith assumed were part of Lance’s life. He didn’t ask too much, even though the room with the purple couch and walls covered in screamo band posters last week had been really weird.

 

“Fine, I guess. Summer just ended, so most people are busy talking about what they did.” Keith replied, watching Lance bring the pen down to his pale arm. Lance drew a smiley face, and then a heart right next to it.

 

“Planning on making any friends?”

 

Keith huffed. “What’s the point?”

 

Lance hummed for a moment, then glanced around the room they were in. It had at least thirty desks. Keith’s new school was rather big, and this was his English classroom.

 

“There are a bunch of kids here.” Lance’s eyes squinted at the wall with a chart on it holding the names of the top five students in each class. “You’re pretty smart, too,” Lance continued, spying Keith’s name in the second spot, “why not make friends with some of the nerds? Katie Holt seems pretty smart…”

 

Keith glanced over the names on the board, seeing that Katie was apparently number one. He’d never really paid attention. School had only been in session for two weeks, after all. Lance looked pensive, staring at the names on the board.

 

“What’s up?” Keith questioned, tugging at Lance’s sleeve. Lance didn’t look away from the board, only furrowed his eyebrows in thought.

 

“I recognize that name. I’ve heard the name Katie Holt before.” Lance looked back at Keith, and the look in his eyes softened, even if his eyes were mostly black. “You should definitely try being friends with her. It might be interesting.”

 

Keith rolled his eyes, but didn’t protest. Lance leaned over the desk and pressed a chaste kiss to the corner of Keith’s lips. The dark haired boy felt his cheeks burn, and didn’t look up at Lance’s face. He knew all about the self satisfied smirk was there without needing to see it.

 

Lance continued doodling, and just to be a little shit and see if his hypothesis was right, he wrote _Lance was here ;)_ in messy script on the inside of Keith’s right arm.

 

~*~

 

“Katie!” Keith called, before the girl could walk out of class that day. She turned around, surprised at being called out by the new guy who had barely spoken a word to anyone other than a teacher since he’d arrived.

 

“Uh, hi,” she answered, stepping to the side so others could pass them. This class preceded lunch, so neither were in a hurry to leave. Keith followed her lead, and leaned on one of the desks in the front row.

 

“For the partner project,” Keith began, “I was wondering if you wanted to work together. We’re the top two in the class, so I figured either way we’ll both get an A, but this way we don’t get paired up with someone who’ll make us do the whole thing by ourselves.”

 

Katie thought about it, face looking extremely pensive for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, that makes sense. First things first, though,” she said, voice suddenly turning serious. “My name’s Pidge, and I’m a they, not a she. Never call me Katie again. Got it?”

 

They held out their hand for a shake, waiting to see if Keith would reject it or accept it. They noticed Keith had ink marks all over his arms, some nonsensical, others forming words and doodles. Keith gave an easy smile and grabbed their hand, shaking it and then stepping towards the door to the classroom. “Got it, Pidge. We can make plans tomorrow.”

 

Pidge had a satisfied smile on their face, until Keith gave a final wave as he ducked out of the classroom, right arm in the air. In a handwriting they knew all too well, across Keith’s inner wrist, were the words that made Pidge wish they had never agreed to actually have a partner for once.

 

~*~

 

Lance didn’t even pretend to be surprised when there are three rapid knocks on his apartment door the next afternoon. He opens the door with a flourish, welcoming his shorter friend into the apartment with a majestic wave of his hand. Pidge stomped past Lance, not even bothering with a greeting as they plopped down on the old blue couch with a huff.

 

“What can I do for you today, Pidge?” Lance asked with a teasing smile. Pidge glared, before letting their body fall sideways onto the cushions under them. Their glasses skewed slightly, hitching up higher on the side not pressed into the threadbare couch.

 

“Cut the crap, you know why I’m here. I can’t believe you’re still hanging on to that kid,” Pidge snapped, scrubbing a hand over their face. Lance leaned against the doorframe to his kitchen with a quirked eyebrow.

 

“Keith’s a great person to work with Pidgey. Super smart, stays on task, and has an amazing smile if you can pull it out of him. I’d be ecstatic to have him as a partner.” Lance ticked off each characteristic on a finger, wiggling his eyebrows on the last point and eyeing Pidge with a look that just screamed trouble.

 

“What have you got planned?” Pidge asked, not in the mood to deal with all of the roundabout explanations they were bound to receive. “I still owe you for the last time I got caught, so just come out with it.”

 

Lance hummed thoughtfully before sitting next to Pidge with a small smile. It seemed to soften up from its usual teasing edge to a more sincere expression. “I just want you to look after him for a while. He’s pretty bad at socializing. I think you guys would be really good friends, and you’ll be seeing each other pretty often in the future anyway.”

 

Pidge narrowed their eyes, scanning Lance’s face and diverting their gaze when Lance looked back down at them. “What exactly do you mean by that?” Pidge inquired, sitting up properly.

 

“I could tell you, but you might get angry,” Lance confessed, twiddling his thumbs in his lap. Pidge didn’t comment, just let that statement sink in for a moment and to try to decode what it meant. Finally, it hit them, and their head whipped around to look at Lance with wide amber eyes so fast Pidge might have gotten a crick in their neck.

 

“Are you planning to do it soon?” Pidge demanded. Lance’s eyebrows bunched together as he watched his friend start pacing the length of his apartment. Lance was quiet again. Pidge got the idea. They raised an eyebrow before their eyes flicked to a framed photo of Lance and Allura on the dresser.

 

“Hey, Allura never said I _couldn’t,_ ” Lance pointed out, “she just advised heavily against it, and said there might be some repercussions if I did.”

 

Pidge stood up quickly, facing Lance and throwing their hands in the air in frustration. “That means _don’t do it_ , stupid! It was hard to even get Allura to agree to let you come work with Hunk, let alone bring a human into our world! How long have you been trying to convince her?” Pidge snapped. Lance stayed quiet, looking at the wall behind Pidge. It clicked. “Oh my god, you haven’t even asked her yet.”

 

Lance let out a noncommittal grunt, standing up to head into the kitchen. There was a pot boiling on the stove, with a little pink recipe card from Hunk propped against the wall on the counter beside it. There was a little note from Hunk at the bottom - _Don’t get too crazy with this!!_ \- and as Pidge squinted at the ingredients it really sank in that Lance was serious, and they weren’t going to be able to derail him anytime soon. They sighed shakily as they picked up the card and read the name on the back with a wince.

 

“How long has Hunk had a recipe for a lucid dreamwalking potion? Don’t you have to have a catalyst for this?” Pidge wondered, watching Lance pull out some small glass bottles and a funnel.

 

“To answer both of those, Hunk dug up the recipe at my request after I got my catalyst. It’s on the night stand if you’re curious. I’ve had it since Allura was teaching me how to use potions correctly.” Lance mumbled, stirring the mixture and sniffing lightly at the evaporation above it.

 

Pidge wandered back to the main part of the apartment and saw a weird, colorful hair tie lying on top of a few books borrowed from Hunk and Allura. Pidge picked it up and examined it, looking for any trace of something that made it special. There was nothing unique about it except maybe the fact it was a rainbow color so bright it hurt to look it, but Pidge supposed sentimental connection was less likely to be detected just by looking at it. Pidge could feel the aura radiating off of it, though - something soft and innocent, cherished by the owner before it was taken, but taken so early in life and so well that it wasn’t missed consciously.

 

“Uh, Pidgey,” Lance called, voice full of false cheer, “could you put it down? I have consciousness spells on that thing, so it gives me the heebie jeebies when someone other than me touches it.”

 

Pidge dropped it back on top of the books and made their way back to the kitchen to see the pot in the sink and Lance screwing the caps back onto the little glass bottles, a light pink liquid now filling them nearly to the brim. Lance carefully put them in the fridge, making sure they were a few inches back from the edge of the shelf and not in danger of being knocked over by anything else. They joined the litter of food and and other random potions crowding the fridge, one bottle filled with a strange opaque liquid that seemed to get darker near the middle and bubbled slightly on top even with the bottle plugged.

 

“You have consciousness of anything else? I only have a spell like that on my plants,” Pidge asked, hopping up to sit on the counter beside the sink as Lance began washing the dishes he’d used.

 

“Not really, except a really light spell on Keith,” Lance replied, pouring soap in the pot, “He doesn’t touch a lot of people, and like I said, he’s bad at socializing, so people don’t try to touch him, either. Plus, it’s really just a scratch at the back of my mind when he’s uncomfortable or weirded out.”

 

Pidge smirked, knowing they had a new way to mess with Lance now, but shifting their expression to something innocent when Lance glanced up at their silence. “How long am I going to be babysitting, anyway?”

 

Lance rolled his eyes, flicking soapy water at Pidge. “Not babysitting. You guys will be really good friends, I can tell. I won’t actually be meeting him for another year, so take care of him for me until then.”

 

Pidge snorted, taking off their glasses to wipe off the water. “Lance, holy shit, that’s so cheesy. Are you planning on doing it on his eighteenth?” Pidge teased, grinning when Lance only pouted down at the sink full of water in response. Pidge cackled.

 

“It’s not cheesy. Fuck you Pidge,” Lance whined, pulling the stopper on the sink drain.

 

~*~

 

Pidge couldn’t help themself. It was like they were a lion and Lance was dangling a piece of meat in front of them, and Pidge had never had a lot of self restraint in the first place. Whether or not they owed a favor to Lance didn’t matter anymore. This was too good an opportunity to pass up.

 

“Hey, Keith!” Pidge called from down the hall, heading to where Keith waited by the back entrance of the school, closest to the student parking lot. Keith gave a half-hearted wave as they approached. Pidge took note of the doodles still littering the inside of his arms, and the beaded bracelet dangling from Keith’s right wrist.

 

“My car’s this way,” Pidge directed, using a hand on Keith’s bicep to pull him towards the vehicle. Pidge adjusted their glasses as they tugged at the appendage, managing to slip in a little squeeze before letting go. Keith seemed to tense up at the pressure, eyes darting between his bicep and the side of Pidge’s face rapidly in confusion. Pidge snickered. _Nice._

 

Keith got in the car, and Pidge seemed amused at the way he awkwardly tried to keep his backpack in his lap and not touch anything. At least he had some boundaries, unlike a certain asshole. Maybe Keith and Lance were a better match than Pidge had originally thought.

 

Pidge started the car, and joined the line moving to leave the parking lot. They flicked a button on the radio to make a CD play over the speakers, even though it was quiet and sounded like some alternative band Keith had never heard before.

 

 _Well,_ Pidge thought, smiling evilly to themself, _Lance did say we would be friends whether it was now or later. Might as well go ahead and have some fun._

 

“So,” Pidge started, side eyeing Keith before looking back at the road, “you and Lance must be pretty close. I thought you were a loner.”

 

Keith coughed, eyes going wide for a moment before he gathered himself from the shock. “You know Lance?”

 

“Nope. I just thought a prickly boy like you must really like this Lance guy to let him write his name all over you like that,” Pidge lied, flicking the blinker with more force than strictly necessary to switch lanes.

 

“What do you mean by ‘prickly’?” Keith asked, not angry but curious, as he seemed to relax a bit. Keith watched as the car sped past the city limits, headed into a residential area with a good bit of space between all the houses, unlike the suburb he was living in now. Richard’s house only had a small strip of grass and a fence separating his house from the next, even with its large size and the hefty price Richard had paid for it.

 

“I dunno, you don’t talk much except to answer stuff in class. Plus, you blow off most of the girls that try talking to you,” Pidge commented. They watched Keith, interested, from the corner of their eye. Keith turned to look out the window when he felt Pidge looking at him. It was a blur of trees on the side of the road, occasionally broken by a house and its spacious yard. Some were crowded with gardens and others with bicycles and plastic cars propelled by children’s feet. Some had both.

 

“That’d be because I can’t tell if they’re flirting with me or not, and either way, I’m not interested.” Keith admitted, toying with the zipper on his backpack. Pidge hummed thoughtfully, and let the subject drop.

 

The rest of the ride was spent talking about how to split up the work once the research portion was done, and then talking about when they should visit the library together to get book sources. When they actually reached Pidge’s house and began working, Pidge realized Lance was probably right about them being friends. Despite the fact Pidge had already taken this class and done an almost identical project three or four times, it seemed this would actually be the smoothest one so far. Pidge may have been about ten times Keith’s age and had at least double the amount of knowledge Keith did, but the guy seemed to keep up with Pidge easily and let them explain things to him when he got them wrong.

 

At the end, when Keith offered to take on more than his fair share of research out of kindness and having nothing better to do, Pidge decided maybe a year watching the kid might not be so bad. Maybe it wouldn’t even feel like returning a favor.

 

As soon as the door closed behind Keith, Pidge’s phone blared Single Ladies, and they were already stifling a laugh as they answered.

 

“I said watch over him, you douchenozzle, not _feel up his muscles,_ ” Lance snapped. Pidge snorted.

 

~*~

 

Lance absentmindedly played with Keith’s hand, twisting it around and crooking each finger individually as if the bend of each appendage held some kind of secret. Keith looked on silently, letting Lance press his thumb into the center of Keith’s pale palm, as if he were a cat and this would expose his claws. The skin on the pad of Lance’s thumb was calloused around the edges, leaving a tingling trail over skin of Keith’s palm as it swept downwards towards his wrist, hooking into the string of beads.

 

Keith watched in awe as the scenes on the beads began to move. Lance had caused them to play out the scenes from Keith’s dreams, no longer just standing still as a reminder, but creating a memory. Keith couldn’t help the way his heartbeat sped up as he watched tides roll in on a stormy beach, the brief flash of lightning flashing up into the sky beside his inner wrist in a way that made it look like it had struck the blue vein that was visible under Keith’s skin.

 

Lance moved on to another bead, twisting the bracelet until his thumb rested against the rose garden again. The red background bloomed open under Lance’s touch, the blossoms becoming defined and getting bigger, and Keith found his gaze moving away from the petals to Lance’s face. The man’s eyes were focused where he peered down at Keith’s arm, the black surrounding his irises seeming to cloud over in a haze. Keith shuddered, but didn’t move away, instead reveling in the fact he had all of Lance’s attention.

 

The more Keith thought about escaping with Lance in only nine months, the more questions he had. Lance seemed to be content in his mystery, but Keith was still curious as to how exactly these dream meetings happened. Especially since the discovery he made that things from the dreams could carry over into the real world.

 

“Lance, what are you, exactly?” Keith asked, scooting forward on the tattered blue material of the couch cushions so that their knees touched. Lance grinned at Keith, his irises glinting the shade of blue that always made shivers dance down Keith’s spine and lit a fire in him that started in the tips of his toes and worked its way throughout his entire body. The sclera was back to its usual reflective black, mirroring Keith’s face back at him.

 

“I’m your boyfriend, duh,” Lance taunted. Keith choked for a second before coming back to the present, already feeling the invasive heat creeping up his neck and cheeks. They’d never really put a name to it, but they were boyfriends, weren’t they? Things like this didn’t usually fluster Keith, but he was still an awkward teenager, and felt a surge of pride and excitement that Lance had actually been considering this a real relationship.

 

The distraction wasn’t enough to deter Keith, though, and he pushed on. “You know what I mean. How do you appear in my dreams? How have you been doing it all this time?” he questioned. He reversed their roles as he grabbed one of Lance’s hands in both of his own and turned it over, tracing a finger over the wrist and then around to the callouses of each finger. Lance let out a huff of laughter.

 

“I don’t know if you’d believe me if I told you.” Lance paused, seeming to gather his thoughts and watching Keith’s thumb drag up the side of his index finger. “I’ll be honest...even if you do believe me, it scares me to tell you,” Lance blanched, watching with rapt attention as Keith’s thumbs came together on his tan palm and started rubbing in slow circles. He gave a little murmur of approval, stretching out his fingers so far that some knuckles popped before relaxing his hand in Keith’s grip.

 

“I don’t think it’ll change anything,” Keith responded, scratching his nails over Lance’s palm to watch the skin turn light before fading back to its original color. “I mean, I’ve known you’re not normal since forever. I’m still going to want to be with you even if you’re not human.”

 

“What gave away the fact that I’m not human?” Lance mocked, leering into Keith’s personal space with a teasing grin. “Are you saying I don’t look and act like your average joe? I thought I was doing so well.”

 

Keith scoffed, flicking Lance in the forehead and leaning away. “Yeah, whatever Lance. Maybe when humans get eyes like that, I’ll reconsider.”

 

Lance gave him a playful smile, tilting back and forth as he considered his response, like his entire being was wavering at the words he was about to say. He steeled himself, and took both of Keith’s hands and looked down at them as he spoke.

 

“I’m a witch.”

 

Keith paused for a moment, then smiled at Lance tentatively. That was on the lower side of what he’d been expecting. “Alright. I guess that explains how you get into my dreams.”

 

Lance looked up, searching Keith’s eyes for any sign of discomfort or panic before smiling back. “It’s actually a pretty complicated process, but yeah. That would be how I do it. Any other pressing questions?”

 

Keith let his gaze roam over Lance’s face, already knowing the question that sat on the tip of his tongue for months. “What’s up with your eyes?”

 

Lance snorted, blinking back before thinking about how to word this without confusing Keith even more. There really was no good way of saying you were somewhat immortal, was there? “Uh, they kinda do that after your powers start maturing. Of course, when I go outside I put a glamour on them, but around other witches and people I’m comfortable with I let them be. The reason they’re black all around is because it’s kind of like a second pupil?” Here, Lance paused, struggling to articulate what the Other Side was. Keith waited quietly, clasping his fingers around Lance’s wrists, which seemed so small when held this way.

 

“I see...a lot more stuff than a human does, but you have to train your eyes to see it whenever you start learning to do magic, and once you have complete vision of both worlds, the glamour feels like a weird sort of sheer blindfold over it. I can still see the supernatural world, yeah, but it’s foggy and - you know that feeling you get when you see something move out of the corner of your eye, but when you turn around you can’t tell what it was?”

 

Keith nodded, taking mental notes and letting Lance speak.

 

“Well, it’s like that. When we’re not in your dreams, I’ll be able to show you.” Lance finished, deciding it would just be easier to wait until he could show Keith. Trying to explain the Other Side was one of the most difficult things to do, since Lance could remember how dull and unfocused his vision had been until Allura had found him and taken him under her wing.

 

“Why not just come meet me early and show me now?” Keith asked, voice light as if it weren’t a big deal but with an undertone of seriousness. “Afraid I’m not gonna like you in real life?”

 

“Maybe I’m afraid you’ll be overwhelmed by my good looks and amazing charm,” Lance fired back, leaning in, “or that you’ll be so awed by my power that you’ll faint. I can hear you now,” Lance’s voice went to a higher, mocking pitch that made Keith scowl, “‘Oh, Lance! You’re so great, I can’t believe I ever acted like you weren’t the most handsome man on earth, and you do magic too! Take me!’ And then you’ll throw yourself at my feet.”

 

Keith let go of one of Lance’s hands to punch him in the shoulder, making the man huff out a laugh. “I don’t sound anything like that, and you are _far_ from the most handsome man on earth.” Keith retorted. Lance moved even closer, breath fanning across Keith’s face as he grinned in amusement.

 

“You got me there,” Lance sighed, flicking his stare over Keith’s face, “I guess you’d be the most handsome man on earth, at least to me.”

 

Keith felt his entire face turn hot in an instant, the tingling in his cheek making Lance laugh again before leaning in to give the shorter man a chaste kiss. “You’re so easy to fluster, it’s adorable.”

 

Keith almost felt the steam pouring out of his ears as he turned around, crossing his arms over his chest and resolutely not looking back at Lance again, even when he started chuckling and begging forgiveness.

 

~*~

 

Pidge found Keith more and more interesting as their time together went on. Their project had been a success, getting the highest score in the class, and gave them the foundation of trust a good friendship should possess.

 

For example, Keith wasn’t as quiet as he first seemed. After he felt comfortable around Pidge, there was a pretty steady stream of conversation. It wasn’t as if he was rambling (unless you brought up literally any cryptid ever, especially mothman), but he did initiate conversations and asked Pidge about their day. It was relaxing, and since the only people Pidge talked to besides Keith were Matt, Lance, Hunk, and occasionally Allura. Pidge was more than happy to have a chance to complain about little things that didn’t give away their supernatural status. Of course, later it would be obvious to Keith what kept Pidge living on the edge of the city and with a big garden out back even though most of Pidge’s current interests resided with technology.

 

Keith didn’t ask any questions that might make Pidge uncomfortable, and he never asked about their strange habits when he was at their house. Seeing as Pidge’s obsession with taking pictures of strange people they saw in public and hanging them up over their desk usually scared people off, when Keith just shrugged and said “Everyone has a weird hobby” it was a huge relief. It was the biggest load of explaining ever taken off of Pidge’s shoulders, even more than the fact they were a witch.

 

At first, Pidge made small excuses to hang out with Keith, like noticing that he missed a question on hydraulics on his physics quiz when he opened his binder to get a piece of paper, and they offered to help him out with it. Eventually, though, they dropped all pretense of needing a reason and just asked him if he wanted to come over and watch some nature and/or alien documentaries. Keith agreed.

 

And that is how Keith became like another part of Pidge’s house: he had his own blanket over the back of the couch, a steadily increasing amount of socks ending up in Pidge’s laundry, and they started stocking the fridge with his Sunny D.

 

(“Why not real orange juice?” Pidge asked curiously, watching Keith unload two packs into the fridge.

 

Keith wrinkled his nose like he’d just smelled a dead body. “It’s really strong, and the kind with pulp is even worse. It leaves a weird sour taste in the back of my throat.” He snapped the fridge door shut and crushed the plastic wrapping into a ball so it would easily fit in the trashcan. “I don’t know why, but Sunny D is better. Leave me alone.”)

 

Either way, it was now normal for them to be curled up on opposite ends of the couch, watching the newest Loch Ness documentary with a bowl of kettle corn between them. Pidge looked over and saw the lights from the screen flashing over Keith’s face, shining over his eyes that were completely transfixed by the pictures of Nessie rolling across. Pidge had got bored halfway through, the narrator’s voice almost putting them to sleep, and since they were bored, they decided to meddle just a bit.

 

“So, who is Lance, anyway?” Pidge asked, grabbing another handful of kettle corn and stuffing their face as Keith turned an adorable shade of pink and looked over with pursed lips.

 

“I guess he’s...uh.” Keith paused, squinting for a second as he tried to pick a word. “He’s the person closest to me,” he finally settled with, but seemed unhappy with the answer as his hands immediately started fiddling with the edge of his blanket. Pidge managed to not smirk. _Too easy_.

 

“So he’s your best friend, then?” Pidge questioned innocently, watching in amusement as Keith’s teeth sunk into his lower lip and his face became conflicted. They were going to have a field day teasing Lance about this later.

 

“Kind of, but not really…” Keith trailed off, avoiding Pidge’s gaze. Pidge only made a prompting noise, waiting for him to go on. Keith’s eyebrows furrowed together. “Well, we’re closer than best friends, but we never really labeled it...but I think saying we’re something like boyfriends would be selling it short.”

 

“What do you mean?” Pidge asked, trying to get a better look at Keith’s face even as he ducked down and let his hair create a makeshift curtain between them. He looked reluctant and unsure of what he was saying, but it also seemed like he’d been needing to say it for a while.

 

“Lance has been the only constant my entire life. I’ve always been tossed from foster family to foster family, never staying long enough to really make friends - or bothering to try, for that matter. But Lance has been there through it all, and he’s so _positive_ , like no matter what happens it’s all going to be alright, and he was always happy to see me.” Keith’s voice took on a softer quality, getting lost in his own memories. “Most of my ‘families’ always thought I was too strange, or too quiet and they seemed on edge when I was around. It’s still like that where I am now. Lance was always so excited to see me, though, and he never got mad at me for being antisocial, he just encouraged me to try and make friends and let it go when I didn’t. I guess...Cindy was right.” Keith smiled gently at the floor, as if there was someone else he was talking to besides Pidge. “He really is just like a guardian angel, except he’s real, and...we’re going to be together one day.”

 

Pidge was no longer amused. In fact, Pidge felt horrible and wished they had never asked. It felt like they had intruded on something meant only for Lance’s ears, something that should have been whispered away from prying listeners. Pidge didn’t even have the confidence to ask who Cindy was, and tried to work past the sudden lump in their throat and the happiness that Lance _had_ hung on to Keith for all of those years, despite the backlash Lance was doomed to receive when Allura found out.

 

“Well, he must be something really special, to make Keith Gyeong smile like that,” Pidge teased, trying to lighten the mood and change the subject. Pidge knew how special Lance was, and they knew they’d be calling Lance after this to remind him that he was one of their best friends, but for right now, Pidge snuggled back into the cushions.

 

They couldn’t resist making Keith squirm just a little bit more, though. “When do you see him anyway? It must be pretty often if he leaves doodles like that on your arms all the time.”

 

Keith tensed up, and didn’t take his eyes off the screen. He pulled his blanket tighter around himself, and scooted farther into his end of the couch. “Ah, we just see each other whenever I’m...not here…” he trailed off, eyebrows bunching together. Pidge didn’t comment, just shrugged and turned their attention back to Nessie, a satisfied smile on their face as Keith shuffled his feet under the blanket.

 

~*~

 

Pidge watched curiously from across the classroom as Keith twisted his fingers into the bracelet on his arm, thumb brushing over the raised bumps of a bead with an ocean design on it. The foam at the crest of the wave stood out from the rest of it and had a weird texture, or at least that’s what Keith had told Pidge when they asked. Keith tended to play with this bead in particular when he was stressed, and Pidge had caught him doing it more and more in the past few days.

 

When Pidge got out of school and was on their way home, they decided to call the only person who would definitely know what was going on with Keith. Despite their friendship starting out as a returned favor, it felt like Lance had been the one giving Pidge another favor. It had been lonely living by themselves for the last few years, with only brief visits from their brother and Lance and the few times they had gone back to New York themself.

 

Pidge called Lance, waiting through four rings before the other picked up the phone. Lance sounded slightly out of breath, and Pidge could hear the sound of Hunk yelling about some miniscule ingredient needed for a special order he was whipping up.

 

“Hey Pidgey, what’s up? Aren’t you at school?” Lance asked. Before Pidge could answer, there was the sound of something hitting the ground and a low “shit” before Lance started yelling about finding the ingredient but not being usable.

 

“Just deafen me Lance, that’s fine,” Pidge snapped, pulling the phone away from their ear for a second. “And no, I just got out. Your boyfriend is acting really anxious lately, but he won’t tell me what’s up.”

 

Lance was quiet for a second, then replied, “He’s been getting upset that he hasn’t told you about me. He already considers you his best friend, dude. He said he feels like he’s lying to you, and I know it makes him feel guilty, since I’m aware of when he’s uncomfortable and whatnot.”

 

Pidge blanched, letting out an exasperated breath. “Lance, this is gonna blow up in your face if you’re not careful. We’re already lying to him, and knowing every single thing about his day isn’t gonna be healthy when you guys are together. It’s barely okay now.”

 

“I know that, I just -” Lance paused, trying to find the best way to word it, “- I just wanna be sure I act the best way to comfort him. I mean, I want him to have good dreams, I want our time together to be easy, and if he gets there and I don’t already know what’s wrong, he might not tell me. He’s just so private.”

 

Pidge cocked an eyebrow, free hand tapping out an annoyed rhythm on their steering wheel. “Have you ever considered that it’s just part of his personality and you shouldn’t try working around it, but rather learn to cooperate with it? It’s really easy, you just let him brood about it for a while, and then he tells you when he’s ready.”

 

Lance let out a small whine on the other end, and Pidge could almost visualize him sagging against Hunk’s side. There was a ruffling noise and then three soft taps - Hunk patting Lance’s head even though he didn’t know why Lance was upset.

 

“Maybe, but I don’t want him to have to brood. I’d rather make him feel better _immediately_.”

 

“That’s not _healthy_ , though. You need to take the awareness spell off of him.” Pidge told him, voice hardened to show they were serious. Lance didn’t make any kind of response besides a labored groan. Pidge continued, “We need to tell him we know each other, too.”

 

“No way, he’ll be mad I lied to him,” Lance replied immediately. Just the mention of it seemed to scare him.

 

Pidge rolled their eyes. “Well, he needs to know. I’m giving you a week to tell him yourself, and if you don’t, I will.”

 

Lance made a sound like a dying whale, and Hunk asked him to move over in the background, followed by an irritated, “‘Move over’ means _off the worktable,_ Lance.”

 

There were the sounds of Lance finally moving away, tipping over an empty flask on the table and righting it, before he sighed dejectedly into the phone. Pidge was right, they always were. “I’ll tell him. I just hope he can forgive me faster than he does other people.”

 

~*~

 

Keith was laying back on his bed, head hanging off the side as Lance spun around in his desk chair. The atmosphere was strange. They had never spent Keith’s dreams in a place as basic as his room before. The closest to this they’d come previously was Keith’s school. Lance had been antsy since Keith fell asleep, all of their conversations were a little stunted and full of dead ends. After the third time Lance asked about school, Keith had had enough.

“Lance, why are you so nervous?” Keith demanded, sitting up so he was looking directly at the other man.

 

Lance swallowed, hands occupied by twisting into the bracelets crowding up his wrists. He fidgeted with the strings hanging off of one, rotating the ends of them incessantly. “Well, I have recently been told that if I want to have a healthy relationship with you, I need to change a few things. I think they’re right.” Lance mumbled. His gaze fell to the floor as he almost whispered, “I’m just scared of how you’ll react to some of it.”

 

Keith crossed his arms and stared Lance down, nodding for him to continue. Lance cleared his throat, and pushed the desk chair closer to the bed to hold Keith’s hand. Maybe the affectionate gesture would somehow make Keith less angry.

 

“There are two really big things I need to tell you,” Lance began, “and the first would be that I’ve had a spell that makes me aware of your...well being, I guess, on you since you were around nine years old. I’ve been told to take that off so I can learn to communicate with you without it.”

 

Keith’s nose scrunched up at the lack of privacy, but didn’t comment. It seemed like the other thing was what scared Lance the most, and he’d had a feeling Lance was somehow watching him throughout the day. It explained how he always knew if something was bothering Keith whether he mentioned it or not.

 

“That does make me a little angry, because you didn’t tell me about it, but I feel like this gets worse,” Keith replied, watching as Lance shifted in his seat uncomfortably.

 

“Yeah, it does,” Lance admitted. He looked up at Keith from under his lashes. He took a deep breath, and said quietly, “Pidge and I have known each other for a long time. They’re a witch, like me, and they knew who you were before you became friends with them.”

 

It took a few seconds for that to process, before everything clicked into place. Pidge, the only real friend Keith had ever had, was only his friend because of Lance. Pidge wasn’t human and had been hiding it. Pidge was probably only looking after him for Lance, because apparently the spell telling Lance everything Keith felt wasn’t enough.

 

“So basically...you’ve both been lying to me for months now, and Pidge was only my friend because you told them to,” Keith summarized.

 

Lance nodded hesitantly, but opened his mouth to protest, “I don’t think Pidge is friends with you _just_ because of that -” Keith pointed at the door, and pulled his hand out of Lance’s to cross it over his chest.

 

“Get out.”

 

Lance scrambled for Keith’s other hand, but it was quickly yanked out of reach. “Keith, please, I’m sorry!” Lance begged.

 

Keith’s face brooked no argument. His cheeks were heating up in anger, and he used one foot to push the desk chair away and towards the door. “I said to get out! I don’t want to see you right now!”

 

Lance flinched back and stood from the chair, but lingered by the side of the bed. He chewed on his lip for a second while Keith glared at him in silence, face red and breath huffing out of his nose in little puffs, like a dragon getting ready to spit fire.

 

“If you really want me to, I’ll leave you alone for a few days,” Lance conceded, and waited for Keith’s reluctant nod to continue, “but please talk to Pidge. They’re not just friends with you because of me, they genuinely like you, which is...really rare for them.”

 

Lance’s voice came out earnest, and Keith turned his head to bore holes into the wall with his eyes. Lance ran his fingers gently over Keith’s cheek, trying to convince himself the soft touch of skin would be enough to last him a few days.

 

Lance pulled back and headed for the door, and paused briefly once more to say, “Please don’t be mad at Pidge. I’d hate for my fuck up to ruin you guys’ friendship.”

 

The door clicked shut behind Lance as he left, and suddenly the scene around Keith began to seem less detailed and colorful. The sunlight that had been coming through the window before was now muted, the bright red of his notebook sitting out on the desk was now a dark mauve.

 

_So this is what a dream without Lance is like._

 

Keith ignored the ache in his chest.

 

~*~

 

If Pidge hadn’t dealt with a pouty Lance the day before already, it would have surprised them how easily and completely Keith managed to slip away and avoid them. It was almost like a game of Where’s Waldo, because every time Pidge thought they’d caught a glimpse of Keith, he somehow dipped out of sight and escaped their eyes. At first Pidge had tried to catch up, but eventually they decided Keith might just need some space and let him hide. Maybe he just needed to process everything Lance had dropped on him.

 

After a few days passed, and all Pidge had seen of Keith was in class when he couldn’t get away, they took matters into their own hands. There was a rule against unnecessary displays of power - at least, there was for the few in Allura’s coven - but if Keith already knew Pidge was a witch, there was no reason to try and hide it. On top of that, it seemed like it would take nothing short of a miracle (or a well timed spell) to get Keith to talk to them again.

 

Even if Pidge was a bit antisocial, and only held a few people close, once they had someone they’d be damned before they let them go. If Keith was going to be difficult, Pidge would be _impossible_. If there was anything that Keith and Pidge matched on, it was stubbornness.

 

So after a quick call to Matt, who had a strangely large collection of spell books that were meant not to exist anymore, Pidge had an easy strategy to trick Keith into talking to them. It was best if Keith didn’t even realize it was happening until it was too late, they decided.

 

So at the end of the school day, Pidge followed Keith out of the classroom, and came up behind him to cover his eyes with their hands. A few quick mumbled words in a language Pidge only sometimes understood themselves, and they were in control over Keith’s senses - which was really creepy. Pidge had never loved their brother more.

 

~*~

 

The days after he told Lance to go away were some of Keith's hardest. Of course, he didn't have Lance in his dreams _every_ night, but usually on those nights he just didn't dream. After Lance left he did have dreams - but they were dull and boring. It was almost as if Lance had taken all of Keith's creativity and color with him.   
  
He dreamed of his time back in the orphanage right after he'd lost his family, when he was separated from what he believed to be his brother. The colors of the orphanage in Keith's mind were always dreary greens and tasteless grays, the memories that resurfaced blurred and frayed at the edges. It was a far cry from the dreams he had when Lance was there, where they could be sitting in a bedroom and yet it still felt like Keith was riding a rollercoaster with how enthralling it was.   
  
If that had been all, Keith might have been fine. He would have continued to sleep too much just like always, finding solace in the blankness of being unconscious. However, soon the boring dreams about his lost brother were the least of his worries.   
  
It became clear Lance had somehow been blocking his mind off from having nightmares when he was there. It was understandable - Lance would know when he was uncomfortable, so he probably prevented the nightmares so Keith wouldn't have to endure it. Without Lance, they quickly became an almost daily occurrence, and threatened to completely take away any restful sleep Keith thought he could get.   
  
It was always about the same thing, it always started the same way. His family's house, the night it had burned, Keith and his brother playing together in their room. Strangely enough, Keith's brother always looked younger than Keith, which was strange. Keith could have sworn his brother was the older sibling, but if Keith couldn't even remember his brother's name, who was he to decide who was born first?   
  
Then there was the smell of smoke.   
  
Keith and his brother wouldn't notice the smoke until it was too late. They didn't have time to crawl out the window and flames were already licking under the door, leaving scorch marks where the heat singed the wood. Keith would start crying, and his brother would pull him into the corner farthest from the door, and it would seem almost safe for a moment. They'd put their foreheads together and then they'd be surrounded by some kind of safety bubble. They could breathe.   
  
Until one of the men looking for them came through the door, flames kicking up around him. He was a shadow except for his eyes, glowing a fierce yellow that made Keith tremble where he sat. The man would do something, and then suddenly they were surrounded by smoke again, clogging their lungs and stealing their oxygen. Keith's brother would collapse to the floor next to him, holding his stomach, where blood was gushing from some kind of wound that went through his body. Keith would pause for a moment, then he would panic, hands reaching for his brother, and when he touched the wound everything flashed red and purple mixing together and then -   
  
Keith woke up.   
  
When the nightmares became constant, Keith began avoiding sleep. He only went to bed when it was absolutely necessary, and forced himself through every day at school. It was something akin to torture, and Keith knew if he just asked Pidge to tell Lance he wanted him around again, he could sleep peacefully.   
  
But Lance had lied to him, invaded his privacy, and had given Keith what he thought was the only true friend he'd ever made on his own and then exposed that as a lie, too. It made Keith feel incapable.   
  
So Keith was physically and emotionally exhausted. Maybe that's why his senses were so dulled that he didn't notice the person he'd been avoiding at school all week not so sneakily coming up behind him. His only thought as the hands clasped over his eyes was, _maybe I'll finally get some rest_ , before everything went blank.

 

~*~

 

When Keith came to, he was in a place that was vaguely familiar. There were leaves crawling up the side of the fence next to the bench where he’d been sat, and a large planter full of ranunculus plants bloomed next to him in all different colors. His mind wasn’t comprehending very quickly at first. He reached out a hand and touched the half opened bud of one of the plants, feeling the stiff petals give to the pressure of his fingers.

 

Motion out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and when he turned towards it he saw the expanse of the rest of the garden, along with Pidge standing among the swaying leaves and vines, arms crossed over their chest, but he couldn’t hear the wind or the sounds that should have been coming from Pidge’s moving mouth. Initially, he gave Pidge a small smile out of confusion, but then Pidge’s brow furrowed and his brain finally started functioning correctly.

 

Keith’s spine straightened from his previous lazy slouch, and his eyes grew wide while his hands flew up to his ears, as if touching them would bring back his hearing. Pidge suddenly looked extremely concerned, uncrossing their arms and moving closer, mouth still moving but too fast for Keith to read their lips. He tried to say their name, felt the warble of it crossing his tongue, but not hearing it still left him disconnected from it. For a few seconds he panicked and tried saying Pidge’s name again, getting increasingly louder, or at least to anyone who could hear. Keith felt the vibration of it in his throat, could sense the push of air out of his lungs to produce sound - but why couldn’t he _hear it?_

 

Pidge put their hands on his shoulders and pressed down on them when Keith grabbed for their arms frantically, still saying their name in a terrified mantra. He looked at Pidge’s eyes but couldn’t focus on them. Finally Pidge shook his shoulders to get his attention, then very deliberately mouthed, “Calm down.”

 

Keith slowed his breathing, trying to count the timing of them and quell his erratic heartbeat. Pidge started breathing with him, and while Keith was still confused and very scared, he let Pidge go when they pulled away and held up a finger. They pulled their phone out of their pocket and started calling someone, and a few seconds later their mouth began moving too fast to understand again. Keith waited patiently, trying to stay calm and ultimately just causing himself to freak out again.

 

A minute or two later, after what looked like angry shouting and a lot of impatient hand gestures, Pidge put their phone away and turned back to Keith with a huff of breath so big even Keith caught the movement of their diaphragm expanding with it.

 

They held their hands out in a placating gesture to make sure Keith was calm, before putting their palms over his ears. He tensed but didn’t move, holding his breath as Pidge’s eyes changed from their usual human appearance. It seemed that they changed the color of their irises when they wore their glamour in their everyday life, as instead of being the usual hazel color, they were a radiant green that almost seemed to glow.

 

Pidge’s mouth gave more minute movements, probably whispering, before Keith could feel sounds beginning to pour back in; at first it was only a distant buzz of wind and then gaining the noise of a bee buzzing around in a patch of daisies nearby, and ending with his full sense of hearing back. He caught the tail ends of almost silently whispered words falling off Pidge’s lips in a language he couldn’t decipher, but somehow sounded familiar.

 

Another huff of breath is released after Pidge pulls their hands away, stepping back a foot or so on wobbly feet with eyes squinted shut. Keith instinctively reached out a hand to help, but then Pidge waved his hand off and walked over to the raised edge of another planter and sat down on the base.

 

“It’s been a really long time since I’ve done magic on an actual person, just give me a minute. That took a lot out of me,” Pidge lamented, tilting their head back to feel the sunlight on their face. Keith’s fingers twitched nervously where they gripped the edge of the bench while he waited for Pidge to open their eyes again. He wanted to take in the sight of Pidge’s real eye color.

 

When their eyes did finally squint open at the sun, they were barely slits that seemed to be looking at something far off. Pidge swayed slightly where they perched at the edge of one of their flower patches. They looked completely spent after the whole ordeal. Before Keith could even begin to ask about what had just happened, new questions sprouted as Pidge reached a hand behind them and submerged their hand in the soil and the dirt surrounding their skin began glowing a soft green color. The veins in Pidge’s arm became slightly illuminated in the same hue, and Pidge let out a relieved sigh before pulling their hand free and patting their hand on the front of their shorts to rid it of leftover dirt.

 

Keith’s eyes stayed trained on the hand for too long after it had already stopped glowing, and when Pidge finally looked back over it seemed to bother them. They only tolerated the tense silence and cautious gaze for a few seconds before asking, “What?”

 

Keith took a deep breath, eyes flicking between the previously shining hand and Pidge’s natural eyes. His words were barely above a whisper as he breathed out, “What the fuck.”

 

Pidge quirked a brow, but still seemed annoyed at the look Keith was giving their hand as they checked to make sure it didn't have any more dirt on it. It was mostly clean, maybe a few particles wedged under their nails, but nothing disgusting like a worm crawling on them to draw this much of Keith's attention. He was openly gaping at their hands like he'd just seen a ghost. It must be the eye color, but that was still confusing because Keith seemed intently focused on Pidge's hands, and Pidge was also under the impression Keith had an idea of what a witch's eyes looked like without a glamour.

 

"I thought you'd seen Lance's real eyes before, Keith. Are mine freaking you out?" Pidge questioned, honestly confused at this point. Keith spluttered for a second, before waving his hands frantically at Pidge's hand.

 

"Your hand! The dirt!" Keith blurted, mind trying to wrap around a _bioluminescent hand, what the fuck._

 

"Yes, I put my hand in the dirt!" Pidge replied, eyes trying to find the problem with the dirt around them. "What's wrong with putting my hand in the dirt?"

 

Keith gave more nonsensical gestures at Pidge in general before eventually stammering out, "Your hand was _glowing_!"

 

Pidge paused, going deadly still for a moment while their eyes widened. The black schlera reflected light the same way Lance's did, shimmering like the heat above asphalt in the hottest days of summer as Pidge really _looked_ at Keith for the first time. Keith's chest was heaving ever so slightly because of his shock at all the recent events, shoulders curled forward just a bit more than normal and his hair a mess from the small breeze sending stray strands flying. To Pidge's eyes, there was also something else - just a bit of a haze - a little red glow around his being, the telltale signs of a weak magical aura -

 

Pidge took in a sharp breath, standing and walking closer to Keith. Keith was still a somewhat frantic mess, but let Pidge poke hold his chin and turn his head side to side as they examined him at a short distance. The glow was slowly beginning to dissipate before their eyes, receding back into Keith, like something was reeling the presence back into his person. Eventually it became so weak Pidge could no longer see it, and they dropped their hand from Keith's face.

 

"Sorry about that, I was just...checking something," they apologized, tone still betraying Pidge's suspicions. "You shouldn't have seen it glow, is all."

 

Keith's eyebrows furrowed, a crease forming on his forehead as he looked up at Pidge. It was strange to be below them, as they were usually sitting or standing next to each other. "What were you doing?"

 

Pidge sighed and plopped down on the bench next to Keith, leaning forward to put their elbows on their knees and cradle their face in their hands. They stared absentmindedly at a rose bush that was preparing to bloom across the garden as they began to explain.

 

"I suppose Lance never bothered to tell you how we gather our energy to use magic. His way is something you can't see in a dream, after all. All witches are different, it just depends on the individual how we get our energy. As you can probably deduce, I get mine from nature - primarily my own garden, since the amount of power we gain is through the seven-fold rule." Pidge stopped for a moment to reach down to the side of the bench, fingers dancing along the stem of one of the ranunculus blooms lovingly. "'Whatever you give will be returned to you seven-fold.' It's like the jacked up version of the golden rule for the supernatural world. I care for these plants, water them every day and make sure they are healthy, and in return they take care of all my magical needs. I never take more than I need, but the garden is more than willing to give whatever it takes."

 

Keith looked around at the garden with new eyes, the plants taking on a new life with this information. Even without eyes that could see the things beyond him, Keith could detect the way the swaying branches above them seemed to tilt at just the right angle to provide Pidge shade, and the stems and vines seemed to curl out and bend closer to Pidge's gentle hands to provide them with an affectionate touch.

 

Which brought up a new question. Keith watched as Pidge thumbed over the leaves of their flowers as he asked, "Why did I see the energy?"

 

Pidge let go of the stem and sank into the back of the bench, head tilting in Keith's direction as they considered their answer for a moment. They gave a thoughtful hum, before settling on the justification they could come up with to keep Keith calm so Pidge could research it further on their own later. "It was most likely just the residual energy of my magic working through you, especially after that little fiasco at the end. I had to do a more complicated restoring spell to give your hearing back. My brother screwed up the first spell, and it probably pumped a lot more energy into you at the last moment. It allowed you to see beyond for a few seconds, but it's over now. Don't worry about it."

 

Keith nodded, and then leaned back on the bench the same way Pidge was with closed eyes. “Right,” he conceded, taking a few seconds to process the information. They both took a little breather to gather their thoughts before Keith muttered, “I guess we have to talk about our feelings now, right?”

 

“Yeah, I guess,” Pidge replied. “Look, I know this is all kind of a shit storm right now, but it’ll all make sense later. For the record, this,” they gestured a finger between their body and Keith’s back and forth, “was only babysitting for about an hour after we hung out that first time. I don’t make a lot of friends, you know how I am, Keith.” Their voice turned lighter, joking, “If I didn’t actually like you there is no chance in hell I’d let you keep all your nasty ass Sunny D in my fridge.”

 

Keith laughed, opening his eyes and smiling at Pidge. “Sunny D is amazing, fuck you.”

 

Pidge grinned, and their shoulders slumped in relief. “Am I forgiven?”

 

Keith pretended to contemplate it for a moment, even going so far as to put a hand to his chin and squint at Pidge like he couldn’t make up his mind, before Pidge smacked him in the shoulder and he gave up the facade. “Yeah, I forgive you,” he relented with a small smile. Pidge grinned back, looking elated to finally have their friend back.

 

“Come on,” they urged, standing from the bench and gesturing towards the door to the house, “let’s go watch another Nessie documentary.”

 

~*~

 

It wasn’t even a full day before Pidge mentioned the bags under Keith’s eyes.

 

“Why do you look like a raccoon?” they demanded the next morning. Keith rolled his eyes and continued walking towards his locker, hoping that’d be a good enough answer. Pidge didn’t let it go.

 

“Seriously, we weren’t talking before so I couldn’t mention it, but you’ve looked like you got hit by a speeding truck for the last week. Why aren’t you sleeping?” Pidge rephrased. Keith sucked on his bottom lip while spinning the combination into his locker, trying to think of an excuse that wouldn’t make him sound as pathetic as the truth did. Pidge simply leaned against the locker next to him, waiting, their expression hidden by the open locker door. Keith didn’t peek around to see the look they were giving him, knowing it would be the same squinty-eyed gaze they gave Keith whenever he said something that didn’t make sense and made him want to explain himself.

 

After a few more beats of silence, Pidge sighed and looked at their feet as Keith shut the locker. “Is it something to do with Lance?”

 

Keith stiffened up but only made an indecisive noise as he gave into the idea of just telling the truth. “Sort of,” he allowed, eyes straying to a window across the hall as he leaned back on his own locker parallel to Pidge. It was easier to avoid eye contact this way. “Ever since we fought I’ve been having really strange nightmares. I would just deal with it, but they’re really vivid and creepy. I don’t like sleeping anymore.”

 

Pidge hummed a contemplative response, turning the explanation over in their head as their gaze finally relaxed and they were no longer squinting. Keith peeked to the side and let out a breath of relief at seeing Pidge’s thinking face instead of the previous expression. They seemed to give their thought up for another time, a mischievous glint taking over their eyes.

 

“Are you going to make up with him soon, or do you need to be a cranky angst lord for a little longer?” Pidge teased, poking at Keith’s side with their index finger. Keith shrunk back with a scowl.

 

“I’m not an angst lord, and what the fuck do you mean, ‘cranky’?” he snapped, dodging Pidge’s finger again as they advanced. At the second half of his sentence, Pidge just paused and gave him a flat stare. “What?”

 

“Keith,” Pidge deadpanned, rolling their eyes and turning to walk towards their first class, “you are literally always cranky.”

 

Keith stared at their retreating back with a frown. “I am not!”

 

“You are!” Pidge called over their shoulder, “Make up with your boyfriend so you can sleep!”

 

Then they were gone, disappearing around a corner. Keith watched the corner for a second, before he realized Pidge had been rather loud, and now people were looking at him. His frown got deeper as he turned and stalked off towards his own class.

 

~*~

 

It didn't take long for Lance to start feeling the effects of no longer having his usual dose of Keith either. He slept fine, but it was never satisfying.

 

He still stuck to his schedule of going out and gathering energy, feeling the amount of magic in his body growing as he moved through large crowds of people at clubs and when a group of people laughed at the edge of the bar he tended some nights. Their excitement and happiness gave Lance a rush, almost like a sugar high with his climbing power. Usually most of this gathered energy would be expended on seeing Keith and keeping the dreams contained to pleasant memories, but without his visits he was constantly overflowing and having to find mundane uses for his magic.

 

Allura had been the one to teach Lance, and under her lead in the coven it was a rule not to use power unnecessarily. Lance loathed using his magic to do something as simple as grab a pen from the other side of the counter when he was at his day job at Hunk's shop, it made him feel incapable and went against everything he'd learned from Allura. However, it was the only way for Lance to prevent himself from getting jitters, and he did it so that he wouldn't be a constant mess at work. It'd be like his first days in Allura's care all over again, when he was always at the edge of having too much power to contain in his body and ended up levitating objects around himself randomly and woke up in the middle of the night only to see his irises would cast a glow on his bedroom ceiling, whether they were covered in a glamour or not.

 

Not only was the power annoyingly overwhelming at times, Lance still wasn't sure if Keith was going to break up with him or not. He had no idea if he'd even still have a boyfriend at the end of this or not, and it was driving him _crazy_ . They'd only been officially "together" for a few months, but they had literally _been together_ since Keith was just a child - over ten years. It was torture to think about Keith not wanting to stay with Lance, let alone if he never wanted to see Lance again.

 

Well, it wasn't like Lance had any kind of claim over Keith -

 

\- and before Lance realized it, the very pen he'd levitated from one end of the counter to his hand had been snapped in half, ink spilling over the dark skin of Lance's knuckles. Hunk peeked over from the door to the prep room, having left a pot boiling on the stove to see what his best friend had done to cause the loud crunch of plastic.

 

Hunk's eyes widened at the sight of Lance staring blankly at the black ink covering his hand, unmoving as it began dripping down onto the inventory paper he'd been filling out previously. Hunk dashed back to the stove to turn off the burner he'd been using, moving the pot to a cooler surface before returning to the scene and moving the stock sheet before gently prying Lance's fingers open and removing the shattered plastic remains of what had once been his favorite pen.

 

“Hey buddy,” Hunk began softly, pulling a paper towel off the holder on the counter to wipe up the mess, “are you with me?”

 

Lance blinked a few times, seeming to come back to himself as he tore his gaze away from the ink the same color as Keith’s hair with a flurry of his eyelashes. His attention settled on Hunk, who was gently scrubbing the space between his index finger and thumb with a kind touch. At least Lance could always count on his best friend to care.

 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Lance replied, taking the paper towel away to catch what was still falling as he headed towards the prep room to wash his hand, “I just got into a fight with Keith. Haven’t seen or heard from him in a week.”

 

Hunk let out a low whistle, knowing from Lance’s stories that an angry Keith was a force to be reckoned with. “What’d you do?”

 

Lance flinched, not even attempting to hide his discomfort at the question. Hunk would have seen through it, anyway. Hunk bristled at the reaction, taking note of the fact that Lance didn’t even twist to look back or deviate from the task of washing his hands - which he was paying too much attention to, because his hands were already clean.

 

“Lance?” Hunk prompted, walking closer to rest a hip against the counter next to the sink and place a hand on the counter. Lance gulped. Hunk meant business.

 

Hunk had given Lance the recipe for the dreamwalking potion without asking too many questions, and he vaguely knew Lance had a boyfriend nobody had met yet, but he’d never heard the full story. It wasn’t exactly something he bragged about. Allura banned them from having any prolonged contact with humans if at all possible. It was a huge risk in case they noticed that witches didn’t age nearly as fast as humans, plus, there was always the threat of a human somehow exposing them or trying to take advantage of them.

 

And then there was, of course, Allura’s personal reason for not getting involved with humans - it could put a mortal in grave danger to associate with them. A long time ago she’d been in a relationship with a half-blood that had been adopted into a human family, and people that had been after Allura had went after the family in some attempt at cornering her. Lance had never known exactly how any of it happened, when Allura did rarely mention it or got coaxed into speaking of it, it was generous to say that she was even _vague_ about the subject.

 

They weren’t exactly under Allura’s control, per se, but they did follow her as leader of sorts as a coven. She was the second oldest of any of them, second only to her uncle, Coran. They were both extremely powerful, but Allura in particular was gifted with an enormous capacity for both magic and control over it. No one knew Allura and Coran’s ages, but they both allowed everyone to know they’d seen more than one war in their lifetimes despite their young looks.

 

It wasn’t uncommon for witch children to be found as orphans in strange places, and that was the case with most of the coven. Allura and Coran had found, trained, and raised most of them, the whole coven being made up of Hunk, Pidge, Matt, and Lance. They were all loyal to Allura, who they sometimes jokingly called Princess, and breaking any of her rules wasn’t _horrible_ , but breaking one for as long as Lance had while somehow keeping it under the radar was sure to get him more than his fair share of disappointment from Hunk. Pidge and Matt were different. Sure, they would initially get mad at and be suspicious of Lance breaking rules, but in the end they saw it as another form of entertainment. It wasn’t their asses on the line if it all went south.

 

Maybe it was time to finally give someone the full story, despite the stern talking to his best friend was sure to give him afterwards. Lance needed someone who understood the full situation to be in his corner when Allura finally figured him out. If he could trust anyone to end up on his side no matter what he did, it was Hunk.

 

So Lance sighed as he dried his hands, and turned to Hunk, who had a look on his face that was a mix of concerned and skeptical.

 

“Hunk, buddy,” Lance replied, voice small, “there’s a reason no one’s met Keith yet.”

 

Hunk took a good look over Lance’s face, seeing how serious his best friend really was, and pulled a stool over from the shop counter to take a seat. Lance didn’t look up. Hunk rested an elbow on the counter and pillowed his head on his hand, using his spare arm to wave Lance into action. “Go on.”

 

Lance sighed, turned around, and told his story.

 

~*~

 

Keith could already feel himself caving as soon as Pidge slipped a bright green sticky note with eleven digits scrawled across it to him after English. They had winked at him with a “Go get ‘em, tiger” before strolling away as if they hadn’t given Keith some of the first, non-magical proof that Lance existed outside his dreams.

 

Keith had only stared at the paper for a minute or two before shoving it in his pocket and heading to his last class of the day, both anxious and excited to go home so he could maybe put the phone number to use. Keith couldn’t focus at all in his last class of the day, which was trig, all talks of theorems and formulas going in one ear and out the other while he contemplated if he should actually call Lance. They hadn’t broken up, but Keith certainly hadn’t given Lance a lot of reasons to hope for easy forgiveness. Keith wasn’t even sure if he was ready to forgive Lance yet.

 

Yes, it had been a huge invasion of privacy, but with as long as Lance had been with him, wouldn’t he know everything anyway? He would hope that by now Lance could tell when Keith was upset without some weird magic cheat sheet. Keith could certainly tell when Lance wasn’t one hundred percent. His eyes would stay on the wall or ground when he was nervous, and if he was sad he would fidget with the bracelets stacked up his wrist. When Lance was excited his gestures when he was speaking got even bigger, giant swoops of his arms and fingers pointing - whether it was happy excitement or angry excitement. Or when Lance was feeling particularly affectionate, and his eyes would soften up and he’d have this small smile, his hands holding Keith’s face and fingertips leaving warm trails that threatened to catch fire and burn Keith up…

 

...and maybe Keith didn’t need to be ready to forgive Lance, but he definitely needed Lance.

 

After staring at the letter he’d received in the mail that day for a while, Keith realized he really wanted to talk to Lance again - especially now that there were things happening that affected their plans. That’s how Keith found himself sitting in the floor of his bedroom, phone in one hand and sticky note in the other, the pad of his thumb hovering over the call button but never quite pressing down. It had been almost two weeks now, that was long enough for Lance to realize what he had done was wrong, right?

 

Keith glanced pulled down the menu at the top of his phone, glaring at the date that lay there. It was getting close to finals, only a month of school left, and then a month of summer, until July 31st. It was May 2nd.

 

Keith closed the menu and hit the green button.

 

~*~

 

“What the hell is that thing?” Keith demanded, staring down the contraption in Pidge’s hands. Their only response was a gesture to put his hand inside of what was obviously a strap for a wrist, but Keith still hesitated, crossing his arms over his chest and stubbornly holding out for an answer. Pidge sighed, rolling their eyes, and letting the thing drop with their hand to their side.

 

“It’s something I created...a while back, when I met Lance and wanted to see about something. It doesn’t do anything to you, just put it on. I want to test a theory,” Pidge told him, voice exasperated.

 

Keith’s eyes narrowed into slits, and he rocked back on his heels and away from Pidge in a bid to get more distance between himself and the strange gadget. “What kind of theories could you have about me?”

 

Pidge gave him a flat look, “I once used a blowtorch on an old PlayStation one just to see what the insides would look like melted. I have theories about everything. Just put the damn thing on your wrist.”

 

Keith eyed them suspiciously for a few more moments before conceding with an annoyed groan, holding out his left arm as if it was about to get amputated.

 

“Quit being so dramatic,” Pidge snapped, wrapping the brace around his lower arm with squinted eyes, “you’re acting like Lance.”

 

Keith looked the other way, a light blush dusting his cheeks. “I do _not_ act like him. That’s a whole other level of annoying and unreasonable.”

 

Pidge snorted, their fingers sliding the final clip into place to keep the strap on Keith’s arm as they eyed the look on their friend’s face. “Ew, you’re blushing. Ever since you two idiots made up you’ve been sickening. Go back to fighting,” Pidge mock complained. They made it sound as if it was some great burden to have to see Keith being mushy all day and get phone calls from Lance that had purpose at the beginning but soon devolved into the other witch asking a million questions about how Keith was doing. In truth, Pidge was just as happy as the two boyfriends themselves that, while Keith and Lance still had issues to work out together about what had happened and how to move forward from it, they were back to talking every day. Pidge knew that Keith was keeping a little day countdown in his room at home until his birthday, a cheesy thing he’d created after he’d talked to Lance again made out of a stack of blue sticky notes and messy sharpie numbers.

 

All in all, they seemed to slowly be rebuilding the trust Keith had lost in Lance during the two months leading up to actually meeting. Pidge was doing their part to make everything easier for the two, had been for months, since the beginning of senior year  when they began sliding pamphlets for colleges in New York onto Keith’s desk at the beginning of each day. Now that everything was starting to go as planned, Pidge had their own questions that needed to be answered, such as what had happened when they had put that spell on Keith.

 

Things from that encounter weren’t quite adding up, and Pidge was going to get to the bottom of it, starting with the little contraption they had designed for Allura to use on Lance years ago.

 

When Allura had found Lance, it was just after she had picked up Pidge and Matt. They never learned the full story of exactly what happened to Lance so that he ended up with them, only that he was now on his own and was basically untrained in most aspects of magic. He only had the appearance of a child when he was brought to them, younger than Pidge, even. He might have been about 19 years old at the time, but for some reason he didn’t have much knowledge of his powers or how to use them, and he was extremely quiet for a few years, only speaking to Allura.

 

The problem with Lance lay in his lack of training - he possessed ridiculous amounts of magic energy, to a dangerous amount that breached his body’s capacity and rivaled even Allura’s power, even as a smaller child. Lance nearly vibrated with magic, and it leaked into his everyday life to the point that he had to stay out of the public eye for a few years while Allura and Coran helped him control it and let his body grow to the point that it actually had a capacity to hold the energy better. Being out of public basically reduced Lance to a human anyway, since his way of gathering magic was through people - he gained it by being in large crowds and feeding off of their excitement for just about anything. Socializing, tension before a scary movie, concerts, and clubs, all things Lance could gain power from.

 

When Allura had finally deemed Lance trained enough to come back to society and live with the rest of them in New York again, she’d asked Pidge to make this lovely piece of machinery, which had taken Pidge a few months to do. They had had to calibrate everything to magic levels and fine tune it so that it would actually measure the amounts, and Lance had to do daily readings for energy and how well he was balancing the amount until his training was finished. This was around the time Hunk had joined them, about the same age as Lance, and became the rock that Lance leaned on while he learned about his powers.

 

Now, as Pidge poked a few buttons on the device and waited for it to take a reading on Keith, they felt a bit nervous. This thing had been designed with Lance in mind, and they could always go back and change it to test lower levels of magic, but if they were right about their suspicions, it would be able to pick up exactly what Pidge needed to have evidence.

 

Keith stared at the device curiously, reaching out to touch one of the buttons before having his hand slapped away by Pidge. He let out a grunt of annoyance and looked the other way while Pidge fiddled with some of the settings on the band before stepping back.

 

“Leave it on for ten minutes or so, and come find me when it beeps,” Pidge commanded, before slipping out the back door to the garden. Keith made an affirming noise before heading for the couch, planning to channel surf while he waited. Since all of the truth came out, and there was no need to hide it anymore, Pidge spent a lot more time in their garden and messing around with their magic experiments. Keith sometimes watched, but more often than not found himself leaving his friend alone so he didn’t throw off their focus.

 

Meanwhile, Pidge dug around their flower beds for the clover they knew was bound to be growing there with rising anticipation. They weren't quite 100% positive, but they _were_ at a steady 79% sure. Based off their feelings alone from that encounter a few weeks ago, they could safely say that Keith had something in him more than what a normal person had. As they pulled up a few stems of clover, Pidge pondered what exactly could have led to Keith becoming the way he was - whether he had gone from human with a little extra something thrown in, or something else reduced to the powerlessness of a human.

 

After they had pulled up enough clover to satisfy their purposes, they spent a few minutes sitting on the same bench Keith had been on, spreading energy to their flowers and receiving some back in return. It calmed them down and steeled their nerves for whatever outcome was awaiting them. When Keith finally called for Pidge from the back door, they thought they were ready for whatever result awaited them. Keith met them halfway in the garden, between the door and the bench, with a confused look on his face.

 

"There are a lot of numbers on this thing. What are you looking for?" Keith asked, holding out his arm with the device still attached. Pidge pulled it closer to them and read the results, then read them again, and then a third time to be sure. Keith got antsy in the silence, shifting from foot to foot as Pidge's eyes got that calculating look in them as they glanced over Keith's entire body. The numbers were there, but was the most solid proof they could get there?

 

"Keith, do you trust me?" Pidge asked quietly.

 

"Yes? But what's going on?" Keith demanded, looking down at the device on his arm like it was going to eat him alive.

 

"Close your eyes for me," Pidge requested, pulling the clover up from their other hand. Keith only hesitated for a moment, and for that Pidge was thankful, because if he had kept looking at them like that he might have seen how nervous Pidge was, as well.

 

With tentative hands they put the clover over Keith's eyelids, putting slight pressure on them and holding them there for a few seconds. To Keith's credit, he barely flinched before going back to his tense but still stance and letting Pidge do what they needed to. Unfortunately, when Pidge pulled the clover away and Keith opened his eyes, they couldn't keep the shocked look off of their face. Keith's expression turned more anxious.

 

"What's wrong? Pidge, what'd you do?" Keith pleaded. The look on his friend's face was scaring him. Pidge just led him towards the fountain in the middle of the garden and gestured for him to lean over the edge. So Keith did, and he let out a yelp and stumbled back from the fountain as soon as he had seen his eyes - _were those his?_

 

Pidge put a hand on his shoulder to steady him, trying to calm him down by not outwardly freaking out the way Keith was at the sight of his eyes, now black with a golden iris in the middle that glowed faintly, even in the daylight. Keith slowly approached the edge of the water again, and rubbed his eyes quickly before looking once more at what his eyes now looked like. They didn't seem nearly as intense as Lance or Pidge's, but there they were, in all their glory.

 

"I suspected from the other day," Pidge admitted, "because you saw when I gathered the energy, even with my energy flowing through you for a few seconds, you shouldn’t have been able to see anything. I’ve never had enough power for something like that, only someone like Lance or Allura could do something like that to a normal human.”

 

Keith sat on the edge of the fountain, still staring into the water with a terrified expression while a hand rose to touch his face right below his left eye. Pidge felt their nervous ramble coming on, but they were powerless to stop it.

 

“When I pushed all that energy into you to restore your hearing it must have unlocked some part of your power, even though I don’t know how it got locked up like that in the first place. Someone must have put a lot of work into hiding the fact that you’re not human, I mean, they even made you age at the same rate as a human, which would be immensely complicated? Plus they would have had to put this wicked thick glamour on you so that your eyes wouldn’t show for this long, and it didn’t seem to be getting any weaker. That device I used was to measure Lance’s magic levels back when Allura was training him, because they were always super high for some reason, and even though your energy is really weak, it’s there? There’s way more magic energy in your body than even the most gifted human could have, but it’s still very weak for a witch, I bet you couldn’t even...uh…” Pidge finally trailed off as Keith looked up, eyes wide and golden irises shining with terror.

 

“Pidge,” Keith croaked, voice coming out scratchy like it had to work past the lump in his throat just to produce the quiet volume it was, “I can’t remember anything about my family, I don’t even know what they looked like. All I know is what the police told me when I got put in the system, that my house burned down and my family died in it. I was...comfortable with that, I was finally done wondering about them. And now, now I have to think about the possibility that my family was full of witches…” Keith concluded, looking back at his reflection one more time before squeezing his eyes closed as if to block out the possibility of the mystery that had just been uncovered.

 

Pidge fidgeted with their fingers for a few seconds, before coming forward to pull the device from Keith’s wrist and set it aside on the edge of the fountain. They sat down beside Keith, and put a hand on his shoulder for quiet support. Keith didn’t make any verbal confirmation that it helped, but his shoulders did drop to a more relaxed position and he leaned just a little bit into the touch as he continued to stare at his reflection.

 

~*~

 

Lance didn’t appear in Keith’s dreams as often as he used to. He’d been tentative to do it as much since they’d fought, but he still actively hid the nightmares from Keith even if Lance wasn’t their replacement. However, they did see each other enough that Keith didn’t have to question that Lance was coming back.

 

When Keith saw Lance again, he wanted to tell his boyfriend (is that what they were?) all about the discovery into his heritage, but at the same time, it seemed so sudden. Keith himself had only known for a few days, and while Pidge said they were digging up old training notes and tests to do on the matter, nothing solid other than the eyes had been seen yet. Pidge had fixed his eyes with another glamour, so Lance wouldn’t know unless Keith told him, but…

 

Keith needed more evidence before he told Lance. Some part of his mind still wanted to think there was no way any of this could be true, and as he saw Lance’s smiling face, he knew he had to wait.

 

Instead, Keith asked Lance about after they would be together, trying to avoid the more pressing matters at hand.

 

“How much stuff do you think I can fit in your apartment?” Keith wondered, watching in quiet happiness while Lance ran his fingers over the beads of Keith’s bracelet and made the scenes set into motion. As the stormy waves crashed on the beach, Lance hummed in thought.

 

“You don’t have much stuff anyway, do you? I’m pretty sure if I throw some junk out you can bring pretty much all of your things,” Lance mumbled absentmindedly. He let go of the beads in favor of threading his fingers with Keith’s, his warm skin providing a momentary anchor for Keith’s messy mind to latch onto. For a few seconds, everything was much more simple and the new complications in his life didn’t matter, all that really seemed important was that Lance loved him and they were going to be together.

 

But then that same stress crept in again, what if not being human was going to make it hard to be with Keith? What if there was some terrible reason his past had been hidden so well? What if there was some reason for Keith’s family being killed tied to them being witches? Would those people come after Keith if his powers were released?

 

What if it put Lance in danger?

 

“How are we gonna move it all?” Keith asked, squeezing Lance’s fingers tighter between his and leaning into the hold. Lance smirked and snaked his other arm behind Keith to pull him closer on the bench they sat on, overlooking a beach in some other country from a cliff. The only reason Keith could tell it was another country was because there was a sign a couple hundred yards behind the bench that had a slightly bent pole that said “Sin Buceo” with letters so faded that they almost weren’t legible. Lance had brought Keith here a few times before this, but Lance always seemed a little more subdued when they were here, almost nostalgic.

 

“I’ll just pick you up in my car. We can probably fit all of it in there, and if not we can leave stuff with Pidge and come back for it some other time.” Lance stated simply, breath ghosting over Keith’s face as he leaned in closer.

 

Keith allowed a few kisses, before his mind flashed to another small detail that he needed to tell Lance, so he broke away and pushed Lance back only far enough to make eye contact while they spoke. Keith cleared his throat, and Lance backed away far enough to see Keith’s whole face, realizing his partner was about to say something important.

 

“So,” Keith began, eyes flicking to the ground, “Pidge was slipping me little pamphlets for different schools at the beginning of this semester, and I kind of figured out why they were all in the same city, and applied to some…”

 

Lance sucked in a breath, and held Keith’s hand in a death grip as he looked back up with a somewhat prideful smile.

 

“...I got into NYU. Full ride.”

 

Lance immediately let out a shout of joy, standing up and picking up Keith to spin him around before planting little kisses all over Keith’s face while he laughed at Lance’s antics. Even Keith’s foster parents hadn’t been this excited; Roger had seemed happy and Karen had just told him she was proud. But Lance, Lance started rambling about how smart Keith was and how exciting this would be and that he was going to support Keith 100%.

 

It was amazing to see Lance so happy and excited, and he asked Keith so many questions about the application process and majors and anything he could do to help. Keith was drunk on Lance’s elation, and in the moment let the words slip out.

 

“I love you.”

 

Lance paused, face completely blank for a moment. Keith suddenly wasn’t so happy anymore, now nervous as he shifted from foot to foot in Lance’s arms. They had been together - whether romantic or not, for years. Keith thought it was just an unspoken thing between them, and they’d say it when they felt like it, and he’d felt like it -

 

\- and Lance was pulling him forward, hands cupping Keith’s cheeks as he slotted their lips together. His thumbs ran up the sides of Keith’s face, petting it like it was something precious, before pulling back to whisper a response in the little space between them.

 

“I love you too, pretty boy. Always will.”

 

Keith shouldn’t have cried, but he did, and Lance didn’t even flinch. Instead he kissed Keith again and brushed the tears away with gentle hands, ignoring the taste of salt between their lips and hushing away Keith’s fears. Keith really had found his home in Lance.

 

Neither of them noticed the soft glow of Lance’s hands on Keith’s skin before it flickered out.

 

~*~

 

“Okay, so, this is super basic. Just put this on and wear it around for a while - actually, can you just stay the night?” Pidge questioned, handing a necklace with a small jar full of herbs attached out to Keith. Keith narrowed his eyes at it and mumbled an affirmative. Roger and Karen were on a couple’s retreat this weekend.

 

“What’s in this?” Keith asked, holding the pendant up where he could look at it more clearly. Pidge rolled their eyes and took the necklace back, motioning for Keith to turn around so they could put it on.

 

“It’s agrimony, spanish moss, and toadflax. Just some stuff to break any spells on you without possibly hurting you in the process. If you just try to break a spell outright, it can backfire, big time.” Pidge explained, tying the necklace around Keith’s neck and stepping away. Neither of them had to point out the obvious example of the last time Pidge had put a spell on Keith. “This will just slowly take it down and reduce the energy to a relatively harmless level that you may or may not feel. If you do, it’ll barely be anything.”

 

Keith nodded, trusting Pidge not to hurt him with this. After both of them standing and waiting for something to happen immediately, they both realized they were being dumb and broke apart to make popcorn and in Keith’s case, grab Sunny D before heading to the couch just like it was any other movie night.

 

Halfway through some movie about a little kid being the antichrist, Pidge spoke up and started ignoring the TV.

 

“There’s someone I want you to meet, because if I can play my cards right, none of us will get in trouble when it comes about that Lance was with you before we knew you weren’t mortal,” Pidge said, kicking the end of their blanket off their feet.

 

It took a moment to tear his eyes from the screen, but once Keith processed Pidge’s words, his expression turned confused. “Why would we get in trouble?”

 

Pidge made an incredulous snorting noise and pointed at a picture hanging on the wall of them, Lance, someone who was obviously Pidge’s brother, and some other people Keith didn’t recognize. “The lady next to Lance is Allura, the one who trained him and most of us. We’ve never explicitly stated that we’re a coven, I guess, but we are one. We follow Allura’s lead, and even though she doesn’t have too many strict rules, she had a bad experience in the past that made her ban us from prolonged and unnecessary intimate contact with humans. It can be pretty dangerous.”

 

Keith nodded along, and from what Lance had told him about witches getting orphaned or people hunting them down, it seemed like a lot of liability could come with being around weaker people. He’d considered it before, that Lance might be better off without a weak human weighing him down, but then Lance would be right there with a reassuring smile and telling Keith how important he was.

 

“So the fact that it was Lance, her star pupil,” Pidge continued, now staring at the picture with unfocused eyes, “that would be a pretty big betrayal. But I have a plan - we just have to make sure she doesn’t find out about how long you and Lance have actually known each other. That’s why I invited her to come by in a couple days.”

 

Keith took in a sharp breath, “You want me to meet her?”

 

Pidge smiled, their grin looking less like a person and more like a shark. It was the look they got on their face right before they pulled some big joke on Keith or when they were right on the edge of making some breakthrough in their research.

 

“Like I said, Keith,” Pidge hummed, “just trust me.”

 

~*~

 

The next morning Keith woke up and felt like nothing was different. Or at least, nothing was different for a few minutes. He blearily stood from where he’d passed out on the couch, Pidge on the other end, and stumbled to the bathroom to wash his mouth out. Sleeping without washing the Sunny D taste out was a mistake.

 

When faced with the mirror, Keith’s eyes once again had the black sclera and the weird, molten gold irises - but that was to be expected, and after a slight jump he found he was already adjusting to the sight. In fact, there were other things dancing all around that were slowly coming into focus - little floating things that were still blurry to his untrained eyes. This was probably what Lance and Pidge called the Other. However, the one thing he wasn’t expecting was that when he reached out to turn on the water, there was a mark covering the back of his right hand, some kind of intricate design that had symbols and words in another language around the edge.

 

“Pidge!” Keith yelled, coming back down the hallway. A few seconds later, Pidge made a low noise of acknowledgement and flopped a hand over the back of the couch to show that they had heard him. Keith said their name again as he held his hand in front of their face, “What the hell does this mean?”

 

Pidge cracked an eye open behind their skewed glasses, peering at the mark blearily before they sat up more and began examining it in earnest. “It’s a clan marking, from some sort of magic family that had a lineage extending more than a few hundred years. Most of them were killed off a hundred or so years ago, before 1900. Let me look at it.”

 

Pidge was oddly calm as they pulled Keith’s hand right up to their face, thumbs running over lines and words as they mumbled under their breath about which families could have lasted that long and then random numbers. They focused on the symbols and could tell they were Korean but not what they meant, before their eyes came to rest on the words in Latin arcing over the circle in the middle, _interritus praelia_. Their eyes widened and they got a giddy smile on their face as they looked up at Keith again, golden eyes blinking back at them in anticipation.

 

“I know what clan you’re from. I can probably track down your family tree and everything - well, Matt or Coran can, not me. The majority of your clan was destroyed a long time ago, around the 1850s, that’s all I can remember about it. They had some pretty heavy political ties, and there were some half-bloods. One of them became royalty at some point, I’m pretty sure,” Pidge rambled, and finally they pointed to the design in the middle, “this is your family coat of arms, you can see that this is a multi-sided knights helmet. The latin words weren’t originally on there, probably showed up later after people from the Other started calling your family members that. It means ‘fearless warrior.’”

 

Keith looked down at the symbol in amazement, trying to take it all in. It was a strange feeling, living his entire life trying to ignore the fact that he had no information on where he came from, and now Pidge was spewing information about his ancestors like it was common knowledge. He could finally find out where he came from, he could look for other people. He might have _family out there_ , someone could still be alive.

 

Pidge pulled out their phone and took a picture of the mark, and a few seconds after sending it to their brother their phone started ringing. As soon as they answered it, Keith could hear the voice shouting on the other side excitedly.

 

“Where the hell did you find someone from the Min clan?!” Matt yelled. “I’ve only heard rumors of the last survivor! Is that what you’ve been doing out in that little creepy house? Tracking down urban legends? Bring him up here so I can document the mark!”

 

Pidge made an aborted whining noise as they released Keith’s hand. “This isn’t the ‘lone survivor’ everyone’s been talking about, this is actually the only _other_ survivor. He’s been locked up in a glamour almost too tight to even realize he was a witch, he was even aging at the rate of a human. It’s news to him too.”

 

Matt must have calmed down, because the next time he spoke it wasn’t loud enough for Keith to understand what he was saying. For a few minutes Pidge only made humming noises to either indicate yes or no, before they finally began telling Matt their plans of having Allura come visit. Keith listened on intently as he plopped back down on the couch, bad breath forgotten in the face of all this new information. Most of what Pidge told their brother were things Keith already knew, until Pidge said something that was new.

“Listen, Matt, I need you to send me some files on that family and bullshit some things for me. Allura has to think I was tracking Keith,” Pidge begged, “I’ll tell you the full story later, but for now I need to keep everything quiet. Keith and I have known each other for a while now, and it wasn’t by chance. Just do me this favor.”

 

There was a muffled sentence, before Matt was shouting again, “Was it Lance? I knew that little bastard was hiding something all these years!”

 

Pidge smirked even though their brother couldn’t see it, and shot Keith a knowing, mischievous look. “I can neither confirm nor deny that. Stay out of your employee’s business, bro.”

 

Matt replied with something else that only made Pidge roll their eyes before they hung up, turning to Keith now. They took a moment to calm down from the energy that always came from talking to their brother, before turning serious as they began telling Keith their plan.

 

“Your family history actually makes this easier. We have a better way to convince Allura of how I found you. I’ll call Lance tomorrow and tell him how this is going to go down, and you should tell him tonight about what’s been happening, but here’s what you need to remember when you talk to Allura…”

 

~*~

 

Keith was nervous as he went to bed, and for a little while he couldn’t bring himself to relax. Pidge hadn’t put the glamour back on Keith at all, as they’d helped Keith decide it was best to just be straightforward. It took a while of playing with the bracelet Lance had given him and reminding himself that Lance loved him to finally let his eyes slide shut, and sleep overtake him.

 

When he started dreaming, he saw Lance sitting on the same bench from the last dream, overlooking the waves coming towards the cliffs and looking peaceful. Keith was hesitant to approach, not wanting to disturb the scene. Lance looked like he belonged there, right at home with the ocean in the background and an endless blue horizon extending in either direction.

 

Keith chewed on the inside of his cheek as he approached quietly, and at the last second, he decided that if he was going to do this, he’d do it in a cheesy flirting way Lance could appreciate, even if it turned out horribly awkward when Keith was the one doing it.

 

Right as Lance seemed to realize his boyfriend’s presence, hands covered his eyes so he couldn’t see Keith, even as he turned to try and look. Keith bit his lip, before awkwardly mumbling, “Guess who.” Keith winced even as he said it - this was the kind of gross shit Lance did, not him. Lance grinned anyway, obviously finding the horrible delivery endearing.

 

“I’m gonna make an educated guess that it’s Keith Gyeong,” Lance replied happily, expecting the hands to move after he said it. Instead, they stayed still, and silence greeted him. He started getting worried when no response came, but before he could ask, Keith began speaking quietly.

 

“Pidge and I might have made some discoveries about my biological family,” Keith murmured, “so my name is probably something like Keith Min-Gyeong.” Keith let his fingers fall from Lance’s confused expression, letting his boyfriend turn around and take in the difference in Keith’s appearance. Lance immediately gasped, twisting around on the bench so he could hold Keith’s face in his hands, staring at his eyes intently.

 

“You’re not human?” Lance asked, adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to swallow this new information.

 

Keith didn’t know what to say as Lance’s eyes searched his face for answers, so he held up his right hand. For the second time in 24 hours, Keith’s hand was uncomfortably close to someone’s eyes. “Pidge picked up on it a while ago, but they weren’t sure until last week. I was waiting for the right time to tell you, but it never felt like it.” Keith paused, pulling his hand away from Lance’s face so he could look into his boyfriend’s dumbfounded eyes. “I kind of had to tonight, because I’m meeting Allura later this week and Pidge has a plan so that you don’t get in trouble for...well, everything before this.”

 

Lance’s face was blank for a minute as he took it all in, hands coming up to trace under Keith’s eyes with shaking fingers. It was quiet, nothing but the sound of the waves crashing up against the shore. Finally, Lance took in a big breath that released as a long sigh, eyes flickering over the tattoo on Keith’s hand one last time before he pulled Keith around to sit on the bench with him.

 

“This actually...simplifies things. I have a feeling I know what Pidge’s plan is, because there’s only one logical option that won’t disrupt the plans we already have. I’m just wondering...why you didn’t tell me as soon as you found out.” Lance stated, looking at the ground. He ran a hand through his hair with shaky breath, eyes squeezing shut.

 

Keith clenched his teeth as he looked out at the horizon, so endless and full of possibilities. The answer wasn’t easy to piece together. It had been a rush to find out that Keith was like Lance, but all the information following the initial revelation had been hard for Keith to comprehend himself. Lance was his everything, and some fleeting part of his mind believed that if something changed Lance would leave him. Maybe something like that had happened in the memories Keith had lost, maybe he just had issues believing that someone like Lance would want to stick around even when things got confusing and complicated.

 

“I was scared,” Keith finally admitted, still peering out at the curve where the water and the sky met, “I’m not exactly sure what I was scared would happen, but it’s kind of a big deal...and I wasn’t sure what your reaction would be, so I didn’t bring it up.”

 

Lance turned back to Keith, staring for a few moments before the silence between them slowly dissolved into Lance letting out a breathy laugh that turned to a full blown howl by the time Keith looked back to his boyfriend.

 

“You- you were afraid of my reaction,” Lance wheezed, hands clutching his stomach, “Do you even realize how much trouble I would be in if Allura knew the truth? I wouldn’t leave you or get mad about you being a witch, Keith, honestly, it’s a relief.”

 

Keith made a noise of embarrassment. Pidge had mentioned that they’d all be in trouble if Allura knew what had been happening, but now he realized Lance was risking a lot more than he’d thought just to be with him.

 

“I’m glad you’re not mad, then?” Keith mumbled, not knowing how to deal with all the relief he felt.

 

Lance just laughed again, leaning in to give Keith a kiss.

 

~*~

 

Keith hadn’t seen Lance since that night, as recommended by both Pidge and Lance. They both said it seemed like a bad plan when Allura was coming to visit, because she might be able to “see Lance’s leftover energy on you,” whatever that meant. Pidge had slowly been telling Keith weird things to expect now that he was revealed to be a witch, just little hints that were out of context like “stay away from bamboo unless you want your glamours to wear off super fast” and “just don’t touch the weird symbols on things, it’s usually bad.”

 

Waiting for Allura to show up at Pidge’s house, Keith laid back on the couch with his head hanging over the edge of the armrest as he watched the weird little glowing circles that hung around Pidge all the time dance through the air. So far, he hadn’t seen anything especially weird in the Other, but Pidge assured him that he would the more his eyes adjusted. Turns out the little circles were the plant spirits that had wandered in from outside, either through an open window or from being attached to Pidge when they came back in from tending the garden. They seemed friendly enough, sometimes coming near Keith and nudging at him like they wanted to lure him back outside to their home. Pidge had also dropped random advice on that front: following the spirits for extended periods of time usually ended in faerie circles, which they said they had experienced before but highly advised against.

 

A knock sounded on the door, and Keith barely registered it as he watched two of the spirits twirl around each other and twine together above his head. He may not want to follow them, but they really were mesmerising. Pidge scoffed as they passed him on the way to the door, waving a hand in front of his face as they passed to direct his attention away from the spirits. It still took him a few moments to tear his gaze away, looking up to Pidge with a furrow in his brow at being interrupted. Pidge just rolled their eyes and went to get the door.

 

When it opened, Keith twisted around on the couch to look at the woman who entered. She was not at all what Keith was expecting. Tall, dark skin, and hair the color of freshly fallen snow and almost as soft looking. She had a regal air about her, and her posture seemed to say she might have actually been some kind of noble at one point, despite only wearing a pair of ripped up jeans and a thin blue sweater with the sleeves rolled up.

 

“Hello, Pidge,” she greeted, stepping inside and closing the door behind her, before noticing Keith standing behind Pidge with bated breath. She smiled warmly, coming forward with an outstretched hand. “You must be Keith. I’m Allura.”

 

Keith tentatively placed his hands in hers, and as soon as their hands touched, he felt a flood of energy come from where they were connected that made every hair on his body stand on end like he’d been struck by lightning. The glamour on Allura’s eyes dropped so that she was grinning at him with the token black sclera and aqua blue irises, the only difference to every other witch Keith had seen so far being that her pupils were a shade of bright pink that seemed to glow brighter as more energy pulsed into their hands. Keith was afraid to let go or break eye contact at this point, so he just held it until Allura let out a satisfied sigh and dropped their hands.

 

“I understand now. I now know why Keith has been aging so quickly, Pidge,” Allura said, turning to her shorter friend. Keith got dizzy from the sudden loss of the energy flow, and stumbled back a step to perch on the end of the couch while they spoke. “Witches age according to how much energy they are able to gather, and Keith’s...circumstances, as you described them to me, wouldn’t have allowed him to gather any. At least, not until recently. Someone from his family must have sealed his memories and helped him escape the last time they were all together. He’s essentially been a human until this point, but he’s recently been having an intake of energy.”

 

Pidge nodded along, eyes calculating as they glanced over to survey Keith’s reaction to the energy influx. “So what is his method?”

 

Allura had a soft smile as she looked to Keith. “Our friend gathers his energy from having a sense of family. You said the two of you have been friends for a while, and I know you must have only gotten very close once you started suspecting he wasn’t human, it seems he was able to derive that from you, Pidge.”

 

Pidge had a smug smile on their face as they came over to pinch Keith’s cheek. “Aww, that’s so cute. Keithy-boy thinks of me as a sibling!”

 

Keith batted their hand away with an annoyed grumble, looking back to Allura. Nobody said anything for a while, just smiling at each other, so Keith finally asked, “What happens now?”

 

Allura seemed to snap back to her more composed air, and she furrowed her brows as she thought for a moment. “Well, usually I would suggest coming to live with my uncle and I to train you, but Matthew has informed me that he and Coran will be working on your family history and that Coran will be rather busy until that is done. I, unfortunately, have been closing in on some research of my own, but it would be finished within a few months…” she trailed off, glancing to Pidge.

 

Pidge brightened up, stepping forward to place a hand on Keith’s shoulder and shooting a smile like a car salesman’s at Allura. “Actually, Keith just got into NYU, so he’d need to live in the city anyway. And since everyone else will be busy, I was thinking Keith could go train with your star pupil, instead. They’d make a great team, trust me.”

 

Allura looked like she’d tasted something sour. “Lance? He’s not even fully finished with his training, I-”

 

“-Lance is more than capable of teaching someone as clueless as Keith, and you know it,” Pidge interrupted, ignoring Keith’s noise of offense as they continued, “I’ve already discussed it with Lance. There’s only a few weeks before Keith turns 18, and we thought it would be a good idea for Keith to just move in with Lance and basically learn how to live as a witch when that happens. Lance and I are both willing to support Keith through college, too.”

 

Allura seemed suspicious as she thought about it. “That’s awfully generous of Lance. How did you convince him of this?” she asked, voice skeptical.

 

Pidge smirked, “I sent him a picture of Keith.”

 

It took both Allura and Keith a moment to understand the context of that, before Allura made a disgusted noise and Keith asked when Pidge had been taking pictures of him. Pidge only shrugged with their devious smile, not answering any questions.

 

Allura seemed to consider the proposition while the other two bickered, a hand on her hip as she scanned her eyes over Keith’s form. It was clear just to her eyes, as sharp as they were, that Keith had never had a chance to actually make use of his powers. Even after she had basically channeled as much energy as Keith’s body could handle into him, Keith’s aura was nearly as weak as a human’s. It would take him some time to gather energy on his own enough to even do a basic spell. As Allura narrowed her eyes and squinted trying to completely block out the sight of the mortal side of her sight, something caught her eye: Keith’s bracelet. From the brief flashes of Keith’s aura she’d seen, his magic was red and gold, like a fire, as his family was known to have. The bracelet was obviously enchanted, and the aura attached to it was the same shade as -

 

Allura smirked. She’d known something was off about this whole situation, Pidge would have told her long ago if they were actually tracking someone from the Min clan. Allura had a plethora of resources her small friend could have used, there was no way Pidge would have passed them up. While Allura wasn’t sure exactly how this had all came about, it was clear Lance was more to blame for this witch’s discovery than Pidge.

 

Allura clapped her hands together loudly, interrupting the two arguing parties and bringing their attention back to her. Pidge looked nervous, Keith seemed curious, like he still had absolutely no idea what was happening. He probably didn’t, from what Allura could gather.

 

“I think that until further notice,” Allura announced, “Keith should be fine living with Lance. Hunk told me that Lance has been having issues with surplus energy, anyway, so with Keith around he’ll have a way to channel that.”

 

Pidge beamed, letting out a whoop of success and giving Keith a hug. They stood on their tiptoes to whisper a nearly silent “you’re welcome” into his ear. Keith spluttered, but gave Pidge an appreciative squeeze before releasing them.

 

Pidge offered for Allura to stay for dinner, and Keith found that despite her formal language and posture, Allura could be just as mischievous as the other witches he’d met so far. As soon as Pidge had dropped their guard, Allura was launching a spoonful of mac n cheese at Pidge’s head and sending a wink Keith’s way as she made the spoon vanish into thin air before Pidge could catch her holding it.

 

~*~

 

Graduation was a strange affair for Keith. Karen had cried a lot, telling her how proud of him she was and that they’d miss him when he was gone, to always call back. Roger had only stood there stony faced until after the ceremony, at the celebration dinner, where he’d given Keith a talk about the “real world.” Keith had nodded along, but his mind was stuck on something he’d seen during the ceremony, something he couldn’t tell if was real or not because of the glamour making his true sight fuzzy. Keith had grown more accustomed to his fine tuned vision in the time since he’d spoken to Allura, and found he quite enjoyed letting his eyes follow the spirits and energies that danced around everything.

 

For the briefest moment during the ceremony, right after he’d gotten his diploma and turned to smile at the photographer while holding the principal’s hand, he’d heard a voice. It was familiar, and shouting his name, and his smile had immediately dropped and his eyes moved rapidly over the crowd trying to find the source of the yell. Right as Keith’s eyes had discovered the mop of brown hair and dark skin he knew so well, the principal had released his hand and gave Keith a light shove, making him drop his gaze from the crowd to see where he was going. When Keith looked back, the face he thought he’d seen was gone. He tried not to feel disappointed.

 

Pidge had hugged him after graduation, then told him that they’d be out of town for a few days visiting their brother and all of their other friends in New York. They’d offered for Keith to come, but with his birthday only a few weeks out, Keith opted out to stay home and pack up.

 

The night of his graduation, Keith laid in bed and pulled his phone up to his face, checking all of the weird memes Pidge had decided to send him in the middle of the ceremony earlier. As he tapped out a reply, a message came through from Lance, who mostly only sent Keith selfies and little “I love you” messages every day. When Keith opened the newest message, though, his breath caught in his throat, the disappointment from earlier now for a completely different reason.

 

 _You look good in blue ;)_ was the caption, above a blurry picture of Keith getting his diploma on stage. Keith stared at the picture for a few minutes, not knowing how to react at first, but finally settling on putting his phone down and rolling over to go to sleep. As soon as he saw that familiar grin in his dreams, Keith pretty much tackled Lance in a hug.

 

“You were there,” Keith sighed contently, resting his forehead on Lance’s shoulder. Lance pulled him in tight.

 

“Of course I was, pretty boy,” Lance cooed, pressing a kiss to the hair he loved to complain about so much. “And only a few weeks until I really come to you.”

 

~*~

 

6 weeks came and passed. Pidge helped Keith pack, slowly moving all of his things to their house so that anything Lance and Keith couldn’t take the first trip up would be easy to get to. Pidge seemed just as happy as Keith was, telling funny stories about Lance from years before, always talking about how Lance’s plans were shitty but Pidge was the one dumb enough to help him make them work. Lance called nearly every day, asking about the progress with packing and weird questions about the color of curtains and bedspreads.

 

Now Keith stood in the foyer of Pidge’s house, foot tapping rapidly against the floor as he stared at his phone. He chewed on his lip as he read the last message over and over again, _Almost there <3 _.

 

That was ten minutes ago. Pidge had been calling him lovesick and teasing him ever since, as Keith had immediately went to stand in front of the door. Now they both were staring at the door, the sound of tires crunching on the gravel outside the house drawing their attention. Keith looked to Pidge with wide eyes, like a deer in the headlights. Pidge wrinkled their nose, mumbling something like “I know this is going to be gross” as they stood and made their way out the back door to avoid the mess about to take place in their living room.

 

Keith turned back to the door, his foot ceasing its tapping as he heard the car door slam closed. There was the sound of feet walking over the gravel and then up the cement walkway, and a shadow outside the door. Keith’s hand was already on the doorknob as the first knock sounded, and he only hesitated a moment before ripping the door open.

 

And - there he was. Lance stood there, blinking at the sudden lack of door under his raised fist, before he looked to Keith and his gaze softened - the same as it had since that first time Keith had told him a secret in the rose garden under the shade of the gazebo. Keith could feel that dream like it was yesterday, in fact he felt it replaying in his chest, the flowers blooming wide in his lungs and stealing his breath as he stumbled forward into Lance’s arms. Lance caught him with a breathless laugh, wide grin brighter than it ever was in Keith’s dreams.

 

Lance pulled away slightly to cup Keith’s face in his hands, and Keith felt his face flush at the warmth of Lance’s fingertips brushing over his cheekbones reverently. Lance watched the way a soft lilac glow emitted from where his skin met Keith’s, a slow smile curving his lips that made Keith want to melt. The fuzzy feelings continued to spread as Lance breathed out a quiet, “Hi there.”

 

And as their lips met, _really_ met, for the first time - Keith felt effervescent.

 


End file.
